My name is Atman, level 80 Draenei Warrior

I have played Warcraft since November of 2006. While home on Thanksgiving break mere weeks before my final exams were coming up in my first semester of graduate school, I decided that I would take the plunge and try out Blizzard's 10 day free trial of the game. My first character was rolled (created) on a server named Fenris. I created an Undead Warlock, and I chose this because the opening cinematic had this race / class combination looking the most badass. The hour that I spent after creating my character remains among my best memories of the game: running around the starting area, stabbing rats with a knife.

I got that character to level 60, and then purchased the Burning Crusade expansion and leveled to 70, pretty much all solo. It was around that time that I decided I would start another character, this time on the Alliance side. I wanted a warrior because the gear I saw other warriors running around with looked so cool. I eventually settled on a Draenei, and I named him after my long-standing screen name: Atman. He currently lives on the Zangarmarsh server.

I joined a startup guild when I was around level 20, in September 2007. It was the first time I'd played with other people regularly, and it introduced me to the thing that makes massively-multiplayer online games so popular: playing with others.

It sounds crazy, but when you get home every day and log into the game, you talk and interact and play with the same people, day after day, and you get to think of them as a type of friend. Not the kind you'd confide in (these are strangers on the Internet for crying out loud), but more like a co-worker: you interact with people with a regularity and familiarity that comes from seeing them every day, chatting with them, and even though you don't think of them as real "friends" there is still a sense of comraderie there.

The leader of our guild decided that I was a good player and nice enough person to promote to the rank of "Officer" within the guild. This gave me responsibility in the form of settling disputes among regular members and giving input to the GM (guild master) on issues concerning the guild, such as a dungeon schedule, point system for distributing equipment, guild events, etc. After some time, I became a de-facto co-GM of the guild, which is currently numbers approximately 150 unique members.

I'll say that again for my friends who don't actually know the depths of my involvement with the game: I am one of the individuals responsible for a guild with 150 members. In addition, I am an administrator of the guild's website and editor of guild videos. We are currently working our way through the newest expansion, the Wrath of the Lich King, and will begin raiding within the next week or so since many of us are reaching the new level cap of 80.

I wrote this because most people don't know how involved in the game I am. Friends of mine who read this blog (all five of you) are, I hope, shielded from the extreme nerdiness of my hobby. For some reason, I thought it might be amusing to let people know that I play the game a LOT, and I'm good at it, and I enjoy it very much.

This post seems to end so anti-climatically, so I'll link you to one of the aforementioned videos... to show you that I'm not lying. For anyone who actually plays the game: That video was taken awhile ago, and is pretty embarrassing. Low gear, keyboard turning, the whole bit. I had just made the move from my laptop to a new desktop, so I was still getting used to mouse-turning and new keybinds. Trust me, I'm working on new movies that are a lot better.

Don't Stop Believin'

Thanksgiving break is the biggest tease on the academic calendar. For non-religious people such as myself, it's the third-most important holiday of the year (after my birthday and X-Mas), and it has every key aspect of a hugely important holiday. Gluttony? Check. Football on TV? Check. Necessary bonding time with annoying family? Check. Everyone's back home, regardless of where they live the rest of the year? Check.

The thing is, break only last four days, at which point everyone has drive back home and deal with another month of bullshit cold weather, annoying people, and tons of shopping. Oh, and don't forget the driving. It's like people who don't drive 11 months out of the year come out in hoards between Nov. 25 and Dec. 25. It's like fucking amateur hour out there on the roads.

Driving home on the Merritt Parkway on Wednesday morning, I saw (literally *saw*, with my own two eyes) a car get clobbered by a full-size deer. Bambi was just loping across the road, minding her own doe-eyed business, when a Honda Civic (not mine) barreled into it at 70 mph*. (*NOTE: This only tangentially relates to things I've seen other creatures named Bambi do at certain types of establishments, in ::ahem:: different phases of my life.) Anyway, traffic slowed to a crawl and I eventually passed the accident; Bambi was on her back, twitching like Michael J. Fox on the side of the highway. It was disgusting, and I did everything I could not to vomit. Luckily, the Honda Civic was okay, however.

I almost never see accidents on my trip from Boston to New Jersey (and back); rush-hour drivers are the best drivers, but Northeast Corridor long-distance commuters (the "long-distance relationship group" that I'm teeth-grindingly a member of) are the second-best. During Thanksgiving break alone, I saw four accidents. You know that statistic that says "92% of all accidents happen within 26 miles from home"? This is the most crap-tacular statistic in the world. OF COURSE 92% of accidents happen there; that's where 92% of all driving occurs! Think about the people whose cars you've sat in during the past year. How many of them would you trust to drive you from New Jersey to Boston? I wouldn't trust one-half of the writers on this blog to drive me from New Jersey to Boston. PatentlyJersey would unquestionably hit an elk, or something.

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Over break, I went to a bar in lovely Sea Bright, NJ. This is (I'm pretty sure) the town where Tony Soprano fictionally once had a beach house; he also docked his yacht, the "Stugatz" upon which he famously whacked Big Pussy, out of Sea Bright. I always thought that Sea Bright was a pretty lame beach town. There is only one bar and one restaurant in the town worth going to, there's only one street that runs north-south, you can't speed because there are too many bored cops, and it's way too close to droves of annoying Sandy Hook tourists in the summer. But maybe this is bubbling teenaged angst speaking here; maybe I'm conditioned to dislike everything related to my youth. Maybe one day I'll buy a house on the west side of that pitifully short sea wall, and maybe some other day it'll be destroyed by a rogue hurricane.

Regardless, this particular bar had a cover singer perform that night. Unlike most solo singers, he played electric and not acoustic guitar. Unlike most solo singers that play Jersey Shore bars, he distributed his set list before going on stage (presumably to facilitate audience requests), and it was immense, both in quantity and in scope. It consisted of seven and half pages, with 100 songs per page, and included everything from Kenny Rogers to Kenny Loggins, from Danzig to Dave Matthews, from Metallica to Men at Work. It's amazing, given this man's knowledge of guitar, that he could not find better work. I mean, I've seen some successful Jersey Shore cover bands that know literally 12 songs (and that includes two separate renditions of "Mr. Brightside").

On the left side of the first page of this tome is a listing of 50 songs that the songwriter deems "Most Requested." I semi-drunkenly brought the song list home with me because I was convinced that these 50 songs are definitive proof of how unironic, uncool, and ridiculous the average doofus who requests songs at a bar is. For example, "Joker" by Steve Miller Band is on this list. In the pantheon of mainstream classic rock, the Steve Miller Band is the single most unimpressive band (it's bland enough to appear in commercials for clothing brands sold at K-Mart), and "Joker" the most unimpressive song of all. The only song by Steve Miller Band that I like is "Stuck in the Middle With You," which is actually performed by Stealer's Wheel, a completely different band.

The list also includes "Laid" by James (a decidedly-agnostic piece which I always confuse with that song "Flood" by Christ-rock band Jars of Clay), "Baby Got Back" (which is played out, even at weddings), "Shimmer" by Fuel (not even one of the top 25 alternative rock songs of the 1990's), "Five Hundred Miles" by the Proclaimers (a song that Brainpan hates, so it must be unironic and uncool), and "Sweet Caroline" (which is played during the 7th inning stretch at Red Sox games).

Jersey Shore bars are sort of ironic (emphasis on "sort of", since the exact same claim I'm making here can be made about bars in California, or northern Virginia, or the suburbs of Boston, Mass.) in that there is no inherent advantage to being a smart kid at the bar. Like many of the people who read this blog, I grew up in a hyper-competitive intellectual environment without ever really realizing what was going on around me. My friends growing up were/are almost unilaterally smart-to-brilliant by nature, which is not the way that 99.9% of the people in this world grow up. Were I born into a steel-mining family in central Pennsylvania, I would feel infinitely more comfortable at bars than I currently do, even though my life would as a whole be much more miserable and unfulfilling than it currently is.

Some of the people everywhere, even in the "brightest" parts of the country, are completely fucking retarded. I realize this fully. (I mean, look at how we drive -- isn't it weird that the parts of the country with the dumbest people also have the most competent drivers?) And, I realize that completely fucking retarded people are just as entitled to go to the bars as I am (even though I wish it weren't like this). What bothers me most, I suppose, is poor taste - something which can be only understood by people who have good taste, because taste is completely subjective. There are millions of people out there who love shitty reality TV and canned Jerry Bruckheimer films, because they're mediocre people by nature and don't care that everyone around them is quietly snickering under their breath. It's not up to me to fix them -- I'm not even sure they should be fixed, since there needs to be a fish at every table -- but it doesn't mean I shouldn't be pissed off that they exist.

And, come on, "I Think We're Alone Now" by Tiffany makes the top 50??! Are we even human?

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I'm taking a course on emotion theory this semester. It's kind of a frustrating course for me, because we have to write reaction papers every week that are graded (on a scale of 1 to 5) by the professor who teaches the course. I'm a chronic overachiever, and it's bothered me all semester that I cannot get a 5/5 on these reaction papers*. (*NOTE: I do routinely get 4/5, and the professor swears to use the entire scale, so I'm not really that pissed. But still...)

Early in November, I went to visit the professor during office hours because I was curious about how to get a perfect 5/5*. (*NOTE: I am a giant fucking tool.) We went over my reaction papers, and he determined that my thoughts are very interesting, but I jump from place to place too much. In other words, I'm a fragmented thinker who doesn't make his transitions explicit. This is probably the exact same problem that I have in writing this blog. :-)

Stay classy out there.

On elections and voting

When I was in third grade, I ran for (and won) my first and only election to public office. Each class in New Monmouth Elementary needed a "Food Service Representative" (someone to tell the lunch ladies what kinds of food we wanted to eat), and I faced some very stiff competition -- this one other kid, a boy who was extremely quiet and seemed kind of stupid, who made the extremely poor decision to run against me.

Because my third grade teacher believed in democracy, my opponent and I stood in front of the class one morning and "debated" before the rest of the class voted. Even at age 9, my debate strategy was flawless. Whenever one of my classmates raised their hands to ask me a question, it was about whether they could have something. Whether they could have pizza for lunch every day. Whether they could have cookies, and juice boxes, and cake, and Atomic Fireballs. Whether they could have Santa come and bring presents before Christmas.

My response to every question I was asked was "Sure." In the minds of the public, I gave them everything they wanted. Unsurprisingly, I was immediately elected in a landslide. And then, on the day when every Food Service Representative had to meet with the lunch ladies and talk about the issues, I called in sick from school and the collective voice of my third-grade class was never heard.

This brings me to the topic of this post, tomorrow's Presidential election. I hear both candidates saying a bunch of crap, which they'll never be able to back up in reality (particularly with the inevitable deficit we're going to face, since we just bailed out Wall Street). And the fact of the matter is, politicians are politicians. They're going to lie. They're going to say whatever they think you want to hear, and it doesn't matter who is elected because the system is fundamentally flawed. Whoever is elected is going to have to clean up the massive deuce that is "Bush's Amurrica", and that's a shit hole that is going to take more than eight years to climb out of.

Yet, because of this, I* (*NOTE: I am Freducate, and all the opinions contained in this blog post are my own. I do not speak for anyone else who writes here, who may disagree with me in both style and/or substance) officially endorse Barack Obama for President. Here's why.

If I'm going to get screwed in the ass by a Presidential administration over the next four years (and whoever is elected is going to screw us, because this is what politicians do), I want it to be by an administration who knows how to screw gently. Kindly, and potentially with a reassuring hand on my shoulder. You see, what appalled me most about the Dubya administration was not the egregious bending of liberty and individual freedoms, the illegal wire-tapping, or the waterboarding. I am relatively certain that every Presidential administration has broken the law and lied to the public on dozens of occasions -- most of them were smart enough not to get caught. Instead, I was most appalled by the transparency, flippancy, and arrogance with which the current administration handled these controversies.

What I like the most about Obama is that he's smart. Really smart. Brilliant. Smarter than me, even. People as smart as him usually look at data all day, but Obama is smooth. He knows how to talk, and he knows how to communicate. He could sell me a car for two thousand over invoice, and I'd buy it in a heartbeat because I'll think I've just made a new friend. The Grand Poo-bah of the Ukraine ("Ukraine is not weak!") would melt like warm butter in Obama's hands.

In a general election where both candidates seem to be promising the world to people (and I still don't understand how Obama's going to make things work financially, without raising taxes across the board, with the economy in a recession), Obama is going to win tomorrow, probably in a landslide. This is likely for two reasons. First, Obama ran a better campaign, motivated by a huge volunteer movement and loads of private financing money. In this sense, rooting for Obama is like rooting for the house in blackjack - that's how enormous his advantage is. Second, at a fundamental level, he connects with people better than his opponent. People want to believe Obama, because he sounds like he has his shit together. In a world where practically nobody has their shit together, sounding like you know what you're talking about is priceless. (*NOTE: Believe me on this one.)

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We may act like adults, and pretend to be civil and refined, but in many ways we've never left third grade. Our behavior is defined, to a high degree, by the behaviors of the people around us. When somebody stands in front of you and tells you what you want to hear, your baseline reaction is to agree with them -- this is persuasion defined, and it drives the economy by causing sales, gets people to hook up with one another, etc. It's scary, but it's true. It's justified to vote, and it's justified to be excited to vote. But don't be surprised if you regret the vote that you make (just like many of the otherwise kind-hearted, blue-blooded Americans who pulled the trigger for Bush in 2000, or worse, 2004).

A Halloween gallimaufry

First, I just watched the Philadelphia Phillies win the World Series, their second Series win in the team's 126-year existence. I was rooting for the Phillies, because they never win, and I just have a soft spot for them. (Let's say it's no coincidence that the year I declared the Phillies as my "National League Team" was the same year that they won the World Series. I piss excellence, in everything I do and in every decision that I make.)

In a way related to what PatentlyJersey described in his most recent post, I'm even more excited because the Phillies are the only Philly team I can stand. I'm hoping that this good karma will spill over, causing the Eagles to finish 6-10.

Finally, I grew up exactly one hour from NYC and one hour, 40 minutes from Philly. However, I can't think of anybody from my home town who rooted for Philadelphia (although my mom's new next-door neighbors inexplicably have a Red Sox sticker in their bedroom window). This always surprised me. Even though Philadelphia sports fans are traditionally miserable, self-loathing, and foul-smelling, you'd think SOMEBODY would want to be that... anyway, we'll see if this changes, what with front-running and all.

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Halloween, which is always a fun time to watch drunk 20-year-old girls parade around in glorified G-strings, is upon us. This time of year, I like to think back on Halloween costumes of yore. There was middle school, where I successfully pulled off the costume equivalent of back-to-back-to-back home runs (or, if you're not a sports fan, the Ph.D., M.D., and M.B.A. degrees. ::snort::).

In sixth grade, I dressed as Judge Lance Ito. In seventh grade, I was a fundamentalist Arab terrorist* (*NOTE: As I mentioned in my last post, 1996 was a different and more innocent time. Can you imagine what a horrible idea it would be for somebody to try this now? They'd be shot in the street. What a little shit I was.) In eighth grade, I dressed as a pimp, and somehow convinced the two biggest guys in the school to dress as my prostitutes (they were my friends, and I was a conniving little bastard even then).

Then in high school and college, I thought I was too cool for school and didn't dress up very much for Halloween. (My bad.) However, I've had a Renaissance of late, in many ways but most importantly with regard to Halloween costumes. Who could forget my 2006 Han Solo? My Academy award-winning 2007 "Zombie businessman" performance? This year, I dressed as a member of the "Blue Barracudas," one of the teams from the early 1990's Nickelodeon game show "Legends of the Hidden Temple".

The show involved physical challenges, trivia, a stone Aztec god named Olmec, and a kick-ass temple filled with guards that would take your pendants if you were unlucky enough to encounter one of them. It was generally awesome in every way, and I actually like to wear my "Blue Barracudas" shirt around campus, even on non-Halloween days. It's kind of an inside joke; if you know the show, you really get the reference. If not, you're kind of dull.

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The Damaged, Inc. team recently visited Atlantic City for a night of gambling, merriment, and mirth. I took the casino for $215 in blackjack winnings, most of the time sitting with PatentlyJersey and sometimes with Brainpan. My play was solid; I was rewarded on 2 or 3 double-downs, I made good decisions playing second-base most of the time, and I was lucky enough to encounter a good dealer or two along the way.

I don't understand why gambling has to involve far-out-of-the-way places. For example, Atlantic City is (to my knowledge) the most accessible gambling locale on the East Coast. Even as such, it takes at least 60-90 minutes of frustrating, two-lane slow driving to get to AC from any major city. (On weekends as well as on weekdays, lots of old people with nothing to do hit up AC.) And don't get me started on Foxwoods/Mohegan Sun. Those casinos are located in areas which resemble the middle of South Jersey, which is even worse than the South Jersey coast.

In its own sort of dilapidated, weird way, however, the trip to Atlantic City is a lot of fun. There's a lot of banter, a lot of getting pumped up. Every so often, "Eye of the Tiger" by Survivor comes on. For the right type of competitive person (e.g., a gambling addict), nothing comes close to AC excitement. Let's go back some time.

Stay classy.

The Al Bundy Theorem... More Dangerous than Murphy's Law

If you grew up in the 90's chances are you saw that wonderful anti-show called Married With Children that mocked, belittled and showed the pointlessness of the typical show on air at the time. It starred Ed O'Neill as Al Bundy, a man who had everything going for him until one day in high school he admitted that he was having good luck. He went from being an all start football player to being married to an obnoxious woman, having money grubbing children and pretty much the most degrading job a 40+ year old man can have, a women's shoe salesman. Needless to say that this theorem dictates that if an individual were to admit to having good luck he would immediately incur a greater amount of bad luck, enough to break his spirit ten times over.

Today as I sat in class I had an epiphany. Many good things have been happening to me in the last week; I didn't have to give my oral argument (which I was totally under prepared for), got to make a trip to AC with all my co-bloggers (where instead of sleeping I played black jack all night, with Red Bull being introduced to my system intravenously, and I doubled my money), I went into school on Saturday to study in the library to discover that there was an open house and I got paid/fed to give a tour of the building and Sunday my team totally dominated in the annual flag football tournament. Seriously, we won all of our games by at least 3 touchdowns. Our reward, besides bragging rights for the next year, which we have already started on, is an open bar event in a few weeks. Oh I almost forgot the best, I had been trying to warn an Ex of mine that she was not taking the LSAT (law school admission test) way to lightly and that she should take one of those unbelievably over priced classes. She insisted that she was super smart, I won't deny she is smart but you can't just take 1 practice exam and think you're the grand master of LSAT, and this week she told me that she totally bombed the test, so badly that she won't tell me her score. So now I have an "I told you so" in my pocket.

I refuse to admit this has anything to do with luck because god may strike me down with lightning, as he did Al Bundy. I prefer to think of it as payment due. I like to think that I have always been the nice guy and have done nice things just because, knowing full well no reward or pat on the back was coming but this seems to be a welcomed down payment. If this streak should continue into exams I would consider the debt paid in full... please??!?? If I were to admit to having luck, as opposed to finally cashing in on some long overdue IOU's, a plane heading for Newark airport would most likely crash into my apt while i am at school destroying everything I own, I'd graduate law school only to never pass the bar and a plethora of other horribly frustrating, demoralizing things would happen to me. However, I would at least not have to worry about my health, because you see in a situation such as this the suffering is meant to be inflicted over the longest period possible.

Fred buys a new car

When the economy began to go to shit last month, I started to think about buying a new car. My reasons for this were threefold. First, I believe in saving when lots of people are spending, and spending when lots of people are saving. (I'm like a poor man's Warren Buffett.) Second, I knew that my credit was solid, and I thought I could get a good deal. Third, my sensible 2001 Santa Fe (pictured, left) was approaching 120,000 miles and another New England winter might have been too much for it.

I brought my mom with me to go car shopping, because she's a tough negotiator and because I figured that any car salesman with a shred of decency would hesitate before blatantly screwing a kid sitting there with his mommy. I also wrote down the MSRP and invoice prices for the three cars I knew I could live with: the Hyundai Elantra, Toyota Corolla, and Honda Civic. (Yes, I know, three super-cool choices.) I'd done enough research to know that car dealers always give people a horrible price first, and I needed a benchmark value to compare their horseshit with. And then I went out.

My first stop was the Hyundai dealer. The Elantra was rated as Consumer Reports' 2009 best small sedan, and as a return Hyundai customer I figured I'd get a good deal. To be honest, I was pretty certain this place would be my only stop. The problem was, the credit crunch hit me here -- hard. Like, 7.5% interest rate hard. There was no way I was buying an Elantra at those numbers, and I walked out the door before I received my second offer from the salesman.

Like you, I'd heard dozens of those annoying Toyota ads on TV over the past month. You know, "Saved by zero..." I thought I could live with driving a Corolla, even though it's not exactly sleek-looking and has the engine of a sub-compact. I started talking myself into the Corolla as I drove to the Toyota dealership next, as if it were the ugly girl at the bar. "It gets 31 mpg overall," I said to myself. "It goes over bumps in the road really well. It's actually HANDSOME in white!" I almost bought it, and if the salesmen at the Toyota dealer weren't huge douchenozzles, I probably would have.

My mom and I spent two hours at the Toyota dealer, haggling, negotiating, turning down offers left and right. I was throwing heat at the salesmen and the sales manager, and they kept fouling me off. Neither of us were budging, and we ended up walking out after being screamed at (believe me, I screamed back), tired and hungry. I just knew I didn't want that Corolla; I knew it didn't make sense to me.

So how did I end up with the sexy car pictured below and to the right? First, let's take a step back to 1996. The era of grunge music was in its death throes, AOL disks were everywhere, and "Independence Day" ushered in a new era of CGI (and scary-ass TV commercials). In the market for a new car that year, my mom visited the local Honda dealership on her lunch break. She ended up being chased out by a frenzied salesman, scared to death. Needless to say, it was not easy convincing my mom to go back to that same Honda dealership, but we did and everything turned out... surprisingly OK.

No, seriously. I got a fair offer -- $250 above invoice -- and excellent financing. I'll be paying off this car until the end of time, but even that's OK (since, once I get my Ph.D., I'll immediately trade up to the Acura TL). The car is a coupe, black, has a spoiler and better-than-average acceleration. It sips fuel. I can make it from NJ to Boston on a half tank of gas. I look good in it (or so I'm told). All is right with the world, and I don't even mind the impending New England winter.

Stay classy.

Every time I see an attractive professional woman, I can't help but think how much more money she would've made if she'd just become a stripper. Just throwing that out there.

Facebook Party Fouls

Note to readers: I should be writing a grant proposal, but I'm writing this instead. I'm hoping that this exercise will motivate me to eventually write the proposal. That's the risky thing about spending a Saturday night at home, determined to get work done; there are other things that you could be doing, and if you don't actually get any work done, you feel doubly pissed. So here's hoping that -- in addition to this lovely blog post you're about to read -- I get some serious work done on my grant proposal tonight. On to the post...

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I like to distract myself at work, mainly because I'm a mediocre scholar and cannot focus on science for longer than 45 minutes at a clip. I like to read Deadspin, and the New York Times, and -- like most people I know -- I'm on Facebook 4 or 5 times a day (never for more than a few minutes), checking what my friends are up to. With my friends scattered across the country, and everyone so damned busy with their own lives that it's difficult to catch up in any meaningful way, I keep myself "in the loop" through Facebook. This has dozens of implications about lots of things, and I'll leave it to some reputable journalist to describe them.

What I want to focus on instead is how Facebook illustrates personality differences, particularly in the sense of some people being really fucking annoying. This is a touchy blog post to write, because (1) I'm sure I do some things that are really annoying, and other people are kind enough not to call me out on it (thanks, btw), and (2) I'm going to make some people uncomfortable because they're my Facebook friend and maybe I'm writing about them. Well, relax. Even if you were annoying me, it's not a big deal. And you're probably not annoying me. Or, maybe you are. Whatever.

Anyway, here goes...

Facebook Party Foul #1: Too much information. As a rule, if it's not something you don't want everyone who knows you, everyone who's ever known you, or everyone who's going to know you to know... don't post it on the Internet. It's amazing how often this rule is violated. People post all the time about their love life, their health problems... let's not even get into menstrual cycles. To make this point perfectly clear, the world will NEVER progress to a place where it is socially appropriate to scream on a crowded street about what your vomit looks like. So please don't write this shit on Facebook.

Facebook Party Foul #2: Friending everybody in the world. This point is somewhat controversial, because I've heard stories of people getting new jobs, etc., straight off of a social network that was huge. I understand this, and it's cool, but the bigger problem with having 1,349 Facebook friends is that there's no possible way you can know all of them. It's true; even the most talented social networkers have difficulty maintaining relationships with more than 150 people. And when one of these 1,349 "friends" of yours gets put on the Megan's Law list, you're going to be directly linked to a sexual predator on Facebook. Congratulations, enjoy the company that you keep.

This is why I don't accept friend requests from people I don't know well, and why I keep my friend list reasonably small. (It may also be because I know very, very few people, in general.) If I barely know someone, I don't really care how they're doing. Given this, what's the point of adding them on Facebook?

Facebook Party Foul #3: Questionable pictures. When I was an undergrad, I remember being asked by my boss (a 50+ year old male professor) to work with another, female student on a project. As if he were enticing me to take on the project, he told me to take a look at her "modeling" pictures on Facebook. Because I'm a jerk, of course I took a look at them... and these were no "modeling" pictures, my friend. No, these pictures were straight-up erotica. This was a moment of great moral change in my life (and the moment that I realized I was getting old), because I thought the professor was a scumbag and the girl was an idiot. And also, kinda hot.

But my point is that the girl was an idiot BECAUSE professors (and people in general) can be scumbags. If you wouldn't want your mother looking at a photo, get it off Facebook.

Facebook Party Foul #4: Updates up the ass. Try to keep your updates to, at maximum, 2-3 times a week. If I wanted to know how you felt each and every day of your life, you'd be one of my best friends or my girlfriend. The more frequently you post updates, the more frequently they show up on the homepages of people who really don't care about you. And then they get pissed off, and really want to give you something to complain about. >:-)

Facebook Party Foul #5: Sending lots of requests to people, asking them to join groups/pick flowers/save the whales/etc. My girlfriend works with people who send stupid chain letters to her. Some of these chain letters are patently ridiculous -- e.g., "Send this E-mail to 27 people by the end of today or you will DIE OF AIDS, and your left arm will fall off too!" -- and she tolerates this stupidity because she's a far nicer person than I will ever be. I'd reply back with a scathing E-mail that would invent new ways to call somebody retarded.

But that's not my point. My point is that, while Facebook add-ons and applications do often "reward" people for sending invitations to all their friends, these rewards are meaningless. This is because Facebook is not real, it's a technological-social convention. As a consequence, it's stupid to care about these "rewards", because in addition to the reward not helping you in any meaningful way, you're pissing off your Facebook friends by being just like that dipshit in your office who sends everyone a chain letter about getting AIDS. You see that dipshit? You know that dipshit? Don't *be* that dipshit.

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I close with a question to the Damaged, Inc., Universe. What grinds your gears about Facebook? "Being friends with Fred" is totally acceptable. Give 'em hell, and stay classy.

I should be at the top of my class....

I have had yet another epiphany. Law school tries to instill the same values in you that an Irish family does.

I mean, think about it. Irish families tend to drink a bit more than other families, mine does, when we get together it's 5 o'clock immediately following breakfast, which is immediately following church. You would think it would go breakfast and then church to pregame on the communion wine but alas years of whiskey have destroyed this sort of logical thinking. The Irish weddings I have gone to seem to focus more on the Jamesons than the vows. One of the first things I learned in law school is that there is always some sort of event in the building where you can obtain free booze, and I mean BOOZE, not just beer, because those judges and attorney's need their scotch. Granted none of this starts before late afternoon but the premise is the same.

Irish families, at least real Irish families, don't really talk about any estrogen based "feelings", dreams or anything else that psychologists like to pick apart. I like to call this the Dennis Leary factor.



We do however love to share our anger, especially when our favorite sports team is losing or getting bad calls from the refs. But in general there isn't much talking on a non-superficial level. Law school is similar, it condemns you for speaking your mind. Instead it prefers that you speak in such a way that you tell people what you think, but you also have to make them feel like you agree with them now matter how much you actually disagree with them. So, essentially, you have to speak but it would be more truthful and insightful if you don't. Probably why no one ever understands what lawyers are talking about, they are trying to be as obtuse as possible to not rub anyone the right way, incidentally this may be why almost all politicians are lawyers. I challenge you to find out one thing they actually think about anything. At least the Irish just stay mute on certain topics so they don't have to lie to one another.

I feel it's much better/healthier for an individual to talk about the happy things and have a beer than to use alcohol to repress their urge to speak their mind. Eventually they are going to snap. Seeing as I tend to use my friends as my sounding board and say the most idiotic and sometimes very inappropriate things to balance out my law school oppression no one has to worry about me exploding on them for a quite a while.

I'm Going to Need a New Hobby

This post is going to be about sports (my apologies in advance). Mere seconds ago, my New York Yankees were eliminated from playoff contention for the first time in 13 years. In reality, "13 years" is a misnomer: it's been 15 years (since 1993) since the Yankees were excluded from the postseason. Nobody made the playoffs in 1994, the strike-shortened season, and the season that I started watching baseball.

The 1998 Yankees were, statistically speaking, the second- or third-best team in the history of the sport. They won 125 games on dominant pitching (3 of their 5 starters had at least 125 ERA+) and solid and patient hitting (8 of the 9 players in their lineup had 100+ OPS+, and Bernie Williams had a ridiculous 160 OPS+).

On the other hand, the 2000 Yankees were, statistically speaking, the weakest or second-weakest World Series champion in the modern (i.e., steroids) era. Their hitting and pitching were average, and they won a pedestrian 87 games in the regular season. Both the 1998 and 2000 teams won the World Series, even though teams that fell somewhere in between these two (e.g., 2001, 2003, 2004) fell short. But at least each of these teams made the playoffs.

What to make of this, especially in the context of this year's Yankees squad not making the playoffs? The best and worst about baseball is that the sport is a giant crapshoot. As easily as it lends itself to miracles, it can lend itself to heartache. Injuries can happen (to the Yankees this year, lots of them), players can underperform for no apparent reason (the same), and other teams in the division can mature in a heartbeat (ditto). Waiting until mathematical elimination for this year's Yankees team was like waiting for your own execution -- you know it's going to happen for a while, and by the time it's imminent, the only feeling left is frustration. Just get it over with already!

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Needless to say, I've always penciled watching baseball into my schedule well into October, and it's going to take some getting used to this year. A good birthday for me involves good times, good food, and lots of fun -- a GREAT birthday also involves the Yankees still playing baseball. Although it's easy to speak gloom and doom under these circumstances, I'm not going to fret. No, instead I'm going to need some ways to divert myself. Here are some ideas:

First, I'm going to devote lots more time this October to my work. Grad school's been making me very busy lately (busy enough to shorten this post from 2,000 to 1,500 words), and I'd like to finish my second year thesis by the end of, ya know, my second year. Lately I've felt a lot like my senior year of college, which was the busiest time of my life. I took lots of classes, tutored some, and did an honors thesis. I worked like a dog, was rewarded handsomely for it, and experienced the happiest exhaustion a person could imagine. I want to feel that good again, and without baseball it could happen.

Second, I'm going to read more for leisure. Being a sports nut is stressful, especially during the postseason. On the other hand, I find quiet reading to be one of the most relaxing things I do. So, while lots of other people stress themselves into an early coronary this October, I'm going to relax and learn about something I've never bothered to study before. How Zen of me.

Third, my new roommate brought his Wii with him at the start of the lease, and... um, yeah, I'm going to get on that. Mario Kart, here I come!

Fourth, and finally, I am going to divert my attention from games of luck (which I cannot control) to games of skill (which I can). That's right, it's getting to be time for another Atlantic City excursion. This one will be the weekend after my birthday, and will involve at least two hotel rooms, at least one bottle of Silver Patron, and lots and lots of blackjack and debauchery. I'm already looking forward to it, a month ahead of time. Waaaa hooooo!!!

Stay classy out there.

Greetings from Fishkill, New York

I promise that this post will have nothing to do with gambling or sports. I'm writing from my cousin Nick's house in upstate New York, on a 40-degree summer (!!) evening, having eaten chicken parm and drank more than one amaretto on the rocks. I complain about grad school a fair bit, but I love that it affords me the freedom to (every so often) skip out of town on Thursday night and spend a long weekend with family and friends.

Speaking of family, visiting my cousin is like giving a State of the Family address. When I'm here, I'm the emissary from New Jersey, and I actually take notes in advance so that I'm prepared to answer the questions I'm asked fairly and honestly. I need to know how EVERYONE is doing, from my Mom's neighbors to Murphy, my dog. To be honest, I enjoy this a lot.

My mom's side of the family is of the typical, hyper-extended Italian-American type. I have more cousins than I could name, and I wouldn't be able to pick 95% of them out of a lineup if I had to. Yes, we eat a lot of cold cuts. When I visit my cousins, I accept that I'm going to hear names that I've never heard before, and they will be somehow related to me. Sometimes -- and this is the most awkward -- they'll remember me and I'll have no clue who they are.

This will happen at any sort of social gathering, where some relative comes scampering up to me, telling me that they remembered when I was a baby or something similar to this (NOTE: Always, vaguely, like it's deserving of some sort of praise... what do I say, congratulations on fulfilling an average human life span? I'm never sure how to handle this.) I admit this flatters me, because I can't imagine my babyhood being a memorable event for anyone, except maybe my parents. So yeah, that's pretty cool, feeling important, you know.

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In my quarter century on this earth (25th birthday coming soon), I've come to the conclusion that the "typical American family life" -- Mom, Dad, two kids, a dog, and lots of white bread and peanut butter -- is pretty much horseshit. In any random group of people (and yes, families are random groups of people, with genetics playing only a faint supporting role), there are bound to be lots of fuck-ups, a few great individuals, but mostly just people who live their lives and make their livings. But even the fuck-ups make families fun, because who else better to make fun of? And what better thing to make fun of, in general, than your own family?

I haven't met too many families in my life that I'm in awe of. Even the Kennedys had a fucked-up sister who was lobotomized and thrown in an institution. And there are times that being in my family in particular pisses me off. But on nights like tonight, thick with laughter and good stories and jokes and smoke, everything is kinda OK.

All right, commence the making fun of me in the "Comments" section below. I'm looking forward to it, and in a sense I kinda deserve it. I'm such a little girl (except for when I'm writing about gambling or sports). Stay classy.

My Fantasy (Football) Life

I'm the proud commissioner of the Psych Department's fantasy football league, and by "proud" I actually mean "incompetent." I admit that I have absolutely no idea how to manage a fantasy football league. (For example, typically FFB leagues are set up "head-to-head", which means each week you play a different player's "team" in order to decide a winner. I mistakenly set up my league so that "points" determine who wins overall. This makes FFB 90% less fun, which is fitting because I am comfortably in 9th place out of ten teams in my league.) I took on the task only because nobody else wanted to do it, and I know it would never get done if I weren't doing it... so I did it.

I love it when friends ask each other for advice on their fantasy team. Nobody knows what they're doing when it comes to fantasy football -- so just pick the best players you can, from the best teams that you can. There are some stastical trends I've noticed, like the superiority of picking an OK player from a good team over a good player from a bad team. But besides that, it's a crapshoot. Who outside of Atlanta knew who Michael Turner was before he blew up for 304 yards in Week 1? I sure as hell didn't. I picked a fantasy team that would have been awesome in 2005.

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I'm not going to debate politics on this blog, but I picked up the 2001 edition of David Halberstam's "The Best and Brightest" yesterday at the library, because I've never read anything about the Vietnam War and, you know, I deserve some light bedtime reading. Anyway, if you get the chance, you should pick up this book, both for its contents and also for the introduction by Sen. John McCain. It's amazing how the past 7 years - and the necessity to pander to the conservative right - have completely changed his views on war. You should read it before you decide who to vote for (if you haven't decided yet). I really liked the pre-2008 John McCain.

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Hey Brainpan, what do you think of the new Metallica CD? I haven't heard it yet...

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Finally, consistent readers know that I like working on a college campus because, although I get a year older each September, the freshmen stay the same age. (NOTE: Giggity. Also, kind of annoying, because freshmen are really immature and behave like total retards most of the time.) But I now think that the provocative clothing by females has gone too far. Seriously, when did it become acceptable to wear only a towel around campus? I'm not complaining about thisper se, but if that were my 18-year-old daughter, she'd be chained to a radiator and fed gruel twice a week. In my modest opinion, ridiculously provocative clothing worn by females should be kept to either (a) the beach, or (b) situations where the immediate result is getting laid (e.g., a bar, a party, filming an adult video). College campuses aren't appropriate for this. Just saying.

Fantasy??? More like a second job...

So it’s been a while but I finally have something substantial to say. FOOTBALL! More specifically fantasy football. Like Gollem I love and hate the game. It consumes my entire life during the fall semester and during law school that is a very dangerous. Seriously I spend so much time checking my fantasy page that if it continues into my career someone’s constitutional rights may be at stake.

The first such obsession was the draft was when I saw Tom Brady available after all the popular running backs were taken. Of course I drafted the guy. Then of course, Murphy, that rat bastard, and his stupid law had to interfere. 5 minutes into the first game he goes and gets a season ending injury. GOOD FREAKING JOB. So now I’m last in my league, because I got 3 points from Brady instead of 33, and frantically changing my teams, instead of learning about federal income taxation exemptions.

In short, to the man that invented fantasy football die a terrible terrible death, and you should have a monument dedicated to your glory. But if I get sued for malpractice because some guy ended up in prison I’m citing you as the reason why.

The One-Track Sense of Humor

Greetings from the coffee table in my living room in Watertown, MA. It's been 9 days since the semester started, and already I've crunched 2 data sets, attended 2 classes, bought 2 high-def TV's (one was too small, and was returned), and had 2 too many heart-to-heart discussions that leave me wondering who I am and what I get wrong all the time. But that's not the point of this blog post, so let's move on.

Today was "Welcome-Back Reception" day in the Psychology department. This year's reception was nicer than last year's. The food was better (it was catered!), there was sparkling water and cheesecake, and every graduate student received a free poster case for all the conferences we're supposed to attend. (BTW, one of the things I really miss about having a real job is all the free stuff. Seriously, my girlfriend averages $100 per week in freebies at her job, and that's on top of an actual, you know, salary. But I digress.)

Later in the meeting, we all went around the meeting room and introduced ourselves to the entire department. Now, most of things I have to do in my daily life (e.g., shower, brush my teeth, drink anything except coffee and beer, not smoke cigarettes) are a giant pain in the ass. But you know what's a GIANT pain in the ass? Standing up in front of 60 people, clearing your throat, introducing yourself and explaining your research interests... every week.

A lot of things have gotten easier for me since I moved up here, 13 months ago. It's easier for me to handle being apart from my family and friends, et al. It's easier for me to tolerate the cold. But it's never gotten any easier for me to speak in public. I speed through talks at a breakneck speed, and I stammer when I have to say even the most rudimentary thing in front of a strange group. It's something I have to work on, and it reminds me -- as grad school does so well -- that I have a lot to learn.

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But, that's not the point of this blog post, either. My point is that, if you were to attend this reception, you'd think you were watching the late George Carlin or some other brilliant stand-up comic. Literally every other thing that people said led to uproarious laughter, even though very few of the things people were saying were actually funny. And this brings me to my point: I'm starting to get sick and tired with how funny people think awkwardness is.

Of course, I blame TV for our infatuation with uncomfortable comedy. Specifically, I blame "The Office", the award-winning TV sitcom that epitomizes the phenomenon by making it so accessible that tens of millions of people think they can pull it off (but they can't). "The Office" is a very good show. It employs a staff of brilliant writers to create its episodes; one of the head writers is a Harvard grad who also moonlights as the chief blogger of Fire Joe Morgan, which was one of my favorite baseball blogs before the humor became too annoying for me to read it anymore.

On the surface, it makes sense that awkward humor is successful humor. It doesn't offend anyone per se, because it's harmless to the people who don't get it. It's sufficiently post-modern and meta, because the people who do get it can roll around in laughter and self-importance. (It just now dawned on me that nearly everyone who loves "The Office" is white -- this makes sense, because white people love thinking about the things they know that other people don't.)

My main problem with awkward humor is that it doesn't take risks -- in not being directly offensive, vulgar, or disgusting, it's so safe and predictable that it actually becomes not-quite-funny. In the game of humor craps, awkward humor is the "Pass" line.

Now, I realize that network TV and academic meetings are both constrained by the laws of common decency -- if someone were to try to do justice to the "Aristocrats" joke, for instance, in either situation, they'd be immediately fired. I also admit to liking shows like "The Office," where the awkward humor is particularly well done. But most people need to realize that (a) they're not funny, and (b) half the people who laugh at the stupid things they say are just trying to be polite. I don't even try to be polite -- I'll sit there stone-faced if I don't think something's funny. You have to earn my laughter, goddamnit.

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Some of us on the Damaged, Inc. team went camping in the Adirondacks last month. We ate cheeseburgers for breakfast, lunch, and dinner; we drank Labatt Blue and then went boating; and we smoked delicious cigars. We decided we'd chip in together and buy a house up there one day. (NOTE: Dudes, it's totally possible. I did a Google search for "Adirondacks real estate", and we can buy a really nice log cabin for about $100,000. We only need 10 percent for a down payment. Let's make this happen.) But because we "camped" in high style, we had cable TV and spent one 45-degree August night inside watching the Bob Saget roast on Comedy Central.

Gilbert Gottfried -- who, by the way, does a fantastic "Aristocrats" joke (N-even close to being-SFW) -- had a excellent and elegant joke, which simply consisted of him making references to Bob Saget not raping and murdering a teenager in 1990. Part of it was the delivery, part of it was that Gilbert Gottfried is just plain ridiculous. But essentially, it was good humor. Like having a taste for good Scotch, good cigars, or good women, it's an acquired taste, and you pretty much have to have the taste in order to understand it.

In short, most people do not have good taste, and are therefore losers who suck at life. (*NOTE: Yes, I am arguing that people who laugh at (good) jokes about raping and murdering teenagers have good taste. I am absolutely, 100% convinced this is the case. People who don't laugh at any good joke - regardless of content - need to get the stick out of their ass.) If these losers were more like the people who blog here, the world would be a much better place. Stay classy.

Giddy as a Schoolgirl

Excerpts from the table of contents to The Handbook of Zombie Emotions:
Chapter 1: Mm Braaaaaaaiiinnnsss
Chapter 2: Are you going to finish those brains?
Chapter 3: Dealing with feelings of remorse when eating family members

And so on. For the watchful blog reader, you may have noticed that I am a different blogger than the usual crew, and also female (not that it's unreasonable for any of these fine gentlemen to be giddy as a schoolgirl at any given time). I am extremely honored to be contributing as a guest, and can vouch for the Damaged, Inc. team as being one fine group of smart, quirky men who are utterly tolerable in many social situations. I am slightly partial to Freducate, being his girlfriend, but don't let that color your opinion.

I thought I would take this opportunity to share something that I recently imparted upon my current class of trainees. I am employed as a corporate sales trainer for a software reseller you've never heard of, and I take my duties quite seriously. Hehehe..."duty". Anyway, following a rant that I gave on the importance of taking lunch breaks, I proceeded to go on about why they should be grateful for the jobs they have. On an aside, for those people who "forget" to take lunch--I don't get those people. There are only about three good reasons I can think of for skipping lunch, including arson or plague, but being too busy is not one of them. So, back to the job pep talk, I thought I would share here a short list of reasons why your job, whatever it may be, probably doesn't suck nearly as much as you suspect.

1. Unless you work in some kind of landscaping or animal herding capacity, chances are you come in each day to a relatively climate-controlled, air-conditioned office. It may seem unnatural to be surrounded by flourescent lighting and small, strange walls serving to distinguish your area of desk, family photos, and useless chotchkes from the next guy's, but at the very least you are comfortable.

2. Think about the last time you complained about your job. Was it because your scroogish boss wouldn't let you leave for Christmas, or the felt in the hats you work with is making you insane, or that pesky King George just won't leave you honest-working colonists alone? No, it was probably something along the lines of "they don't pay me or appreciate me enough, and I'm not fulfilled in a spiritual way". Just the mere fact that we can complain about not being "fulfilled" is a privelege. It is indeed a luxury to not have to worry about putting food on the table, or a roof over our heads, or an XBox in every house and a reasonably priced sub-compact in our garages. So think about that the next time you sip coffee and allow yourself to stare wistfully out the window of the break room, dreaming of the day that you can finally take the time to write your novel/album/porno script. Heck, this is America--every red-blooded male, female, or other is entitled to that dream, but should remember that even having a dream is a luxury.

It just occured to me that this is slightly long-winded, so I'm going to cut it short. I'm sure I have other reasons for jobs not sucking to share, as well as plenty of reasons why it probably is awful and soul-draining, but those will have to wait for another day.

A heartfelt thanks to the Damanged, Inc. boys for letting me say my piece, and I hope everyone has a good weekend!

Love and ranting,
ARoll

On Grad School Life

I post about a lot of random stuff, and I realize that I almost never post about the thing that I spend the most of my time doing: being a grad student. I'm in my thirteenth month of graduate school now (NOTE: although, to be fair, I spent one month on a series of white-kid vacations), and I feel like I've learned enough about my work to run my electronic mouth a little bit. While you read what I have to say, I suggest that you listen to the new Metallica song "Cyanide," available streaming on their website here. Seriously, it's awesome, click on it.

The first thing I've learned is that graduate school brings together a bunch of large personalities belonging to very intelligent people. The second thing - closely related to the first - is that it's mostly impossible for large groups of intelligent people to get along with each other. Intelligent people are just too damned weird, and they care way too much about the quality of how they think. You know what happens when you start believing that you think the truth? You become a zealot, an evangelist, and an asshole. I think of my brain as a sensitive, but mostly stupid, instrument. When I get something right, I'm genuinely surprised. (*NOTE: Some of you might be thinking that I'm refuting my own argument by trying to get you to agree that the way I think is right. Doesn't that make me a zealot? Nope - I actually think what I just typed is wrong, and you shouldn't agree with me. So, there.)

The third thing I've learned is that I'm amazed at how little expertise really exists out there. I've worked with a group of really smart people over the past year, and it seems (to my uncultured mind) that what separates the most brilliant from the merely intelligent is not their speed of finding answers, but instead how quickly they shuffle through questions, seeming to have separated the bullshit from the real point in milliseconds. I cannot do this (yet), and it remains a sight to see. My undergraduate adviser once referred to academia as "intellectual sport," and if that is true, I am a poor man's Wilson Betemit.

The fourth thing is that I expected grad school to help me illuminate where I stand with respect to the rest of the (non-academic) world, but this hasn't really happened yet. If anything, I feel like I've fallen behind my actual money-making compadres in the "real world." Graduate school really makes me think about graduate school is about, and I'm not sure I have the answer yet. I think that it helps that grad school is a highly-controlled environment; I can make a lot of mistakes here that would get me fired from a real job. I think that it shows the world that I'm willing to put off reward in order to obtain a goal. But I'm not certain yet why it's necessary. I'm not sure why it's sufficient.

A week before flying to Albuquerque, New Mexico, this February for my first major academic conference, my adviser sat with me and we discussed what I would expect at the conference. She told me that if I noticed anyone "whose work I admired," I should ask her first if she knew them and get the OK, before I went up to them and... I imagine I would get down on my knees and "idolize" them? I don't know what I would do, and this is a very important aspect of who I am, I think. It's not that I don't admire certain people's work -- in fact, I do. And it's not that I have a problem with approaching people. I may not be the type to walk up to the hottest girl in the bar (which is OK, because I presently date the hottest girl in the bar), but in professional situations I can be very personable.

It's the interaction between the two that gets me. It's that I could never see myself going up to a strange researcher and talking shop for 30-45 minutes. What would be the point? As I mentioned earlier in this post, most academics are absolutely no fun to talk to. They're awkward, self-possessed, and incredibly elitist (one mistakenly thought I was a waiter and asked me to pour him a glass of champagne at a cocktail party). And as I mentioned in an earlier post, I'm terrible at small talk, and I do think that talking about research is "small talk." If a person can't figure out 99.9% of what they need to know from reading a researcher's journal articles, either the researcher sucks at writing or the reader sucks at reading.

And this, my friends, is why I would make a terrible academic.

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If reactions are positive, I'll write more posts in the months to come about how grad school life goes. I do think it's an interesting chapter of my life, even if my average day consists of driving to an office, sitting at a computer, eating a Lean Cuisine, reading Deadspin and chatting on Facebook in between running analyses in SPSS and reading for class. Stay classy out there.

What a WASP

Really quick post tonight, because I'm getting up at 5 AM tomorrow to leave Florida and head back to NJ for just a day. Then it's back up to Boston, to begin 18th grade. The funniest thing I've heard down here was purely geographical (and, in reality, not all that funny). My dad was trying to explain to my uncle where a museum was in the town of St. Augustine, which is America's oldest incorporated town but this is not the point. Anyway, he described it as being "down the street from the Slave Market" ... and he really, unironically meant "Slave Market." Ladies and gentlemen, this is why the South should become its own sovereign nation.

My dad's twin brother - my youngest uncle - is one of the coolest relatives I have (NOTE: I have very few cool relatives). He drives fast cars, drinks Miller Lite, and once volunteered to sit in the passenger seat of my Santa Fe and listen to Jay-Z's "The Blueprint" with me. At dinner tonight, he explained to me that my ancestry could be traced back to the Mayflower, more specifically to William Bradford, the first governor of Plymouth Colony. This surprised the hell out of me, because I am 75% Italian by heritage and the rest of me is such a mess, I figured nobody would ever figure to check it out.

But in fact, a relative of mine from the great town of Millville, N.J. (What the fuck UP, South Jersey!) recently performed the genealogical survey, and it is true. I am a WASP, and, unsurprisingly, a Mass-hole. The coolest thing about being a Mayflower descendant is that I am cousins with the Baldwin brothers ("30 Rock" is a great TV show), Julia Child (nipping the cooking sherry is equally great), Christopher Reeve (who is dead), and the great actor, Clint Eastwood. The second-coolest thing about being a Mayflower descendant is that it greatly expands my possibilities when purchasing ties.

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Below is a link to an excellent Esquire article about one of the most intriguing "ghost cities" of America, Newark, N.J., and Cory Booker, the young mayor who's been trying to save it: Here. Just as interesting is Booker's "angry letter" reply to Esquire, to which they've posted a link on top of the main article.

If somebody on this blog wants to post about Newark, it's going be someone who lives there (e.g., PatentlyJersey). I have some opinions about the city, but this is neither my forum nor my time to state them. I'll just leave it at this -- I admire Mayor Booker and I think he's one of the few politicians who tries to behave true to their own causes. I'm just not sure that Newark can ever be saved.

But the article above is a must-read if you want to slack for an hour at work, or something. Stay classy out there.

Greetings from Jacksonville, Florida

I'm visiting my dad and stepmom in Florida this week, and it's definitely a little weird (in a metaphysical sense) that I can wake up in a comfy bed in New Jersey and fall asleep in a similarly comfy bed in a completely different state, nearly a thousand miles south.

One thing that I've managed to get through my impossibly thick skull is, I know a lot about New Jersey. I know that it has a lot of two-town combinations with nearly or exactly the same name (e.g., Belmar::Bellmawr; Morristown::Moorestown; Union::Union; Washington::Washington). I know that there's an invisible NYC/Philadelphia boundary somewhere in Mercer County that neatly divides people who root for the Giants or Jets and people who root for the Eggles. To this end, there are two New Jerseys -- the one that aligns with NYC, and the one that aligns with Philadelphia. So, it's OK that there is duplicity in how NJ towns are named. Further, I know that jughandles are an effacious method to control traffic, and I know that 85 degrees is fucking HOT.

Fundamentally, I think that New Jersey makes sense. I might not like how it makes sense, but I know that it does make sense. And all of this gets thrown on its side when I land, 90 minutes later, in Florida.

Florida is a place where everybody talks a little funny and moves a little too slow. There are 1,394 permutations of the Florida license plate. There are no jughandles in Florida, and 85 degrees is a chilly November day. Many people down here care a lot about values, but have no clue how to define them (e.g., when my girlfriend visits with me - which is not the case on this trip - we are forced to sleep in separate bedrooms. This is a paradox in so many ways, I care not to get into them).

Everybody in Florida is polite and starts conversations with strangers, which strikes me as a little odd because I have autism. A typical exchange between a Floridian and myself goes something like this:

Unnecessarily pleasant, 60-ish Florida woman with box-top haircut not unlike "Kid" from Kid 'n' Play: "Wow gee whiz, it surrrre is rainin' buckets out there."

Fred, already unsure how to proceed: "Yeah... yeah, it's definitely raining heavily out there."

Woman: "Why, you remind me of someone. Are you a student over at Flagler University?"

Fred's brain: "No, I went/go to places with actual academic standards, in parts of the country where residents have brains."
Fred verbally: "No, I can't say that I did, sorry."

Woman: "Why, I must say, God must be pourin' buckets on us this evenin'!"

Fred's brain: "JESUS FUCKING CHRIST, ISN'T SILENCE BETTER THAN THIS?! You're just saying the same thing, over and over, but subtlely different, just to make small talk!"
Fred verbally: "It's amazing, but I guess we just need the rain."

And so on, and so forth.

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You see, the thing is, I like being treated like I don't exist in public situations. It's easier that way - it spares me the trouble of pretending to like people that I don't like. I'm completely, 100% comfortable with pretending that the people around me don't exist in public situations, and I'd be hard-pressed to name people I know who actually enjoy random small-talk. It's pointless, it really is, and I think it makes sense that we don't start talking to lots of people when we're in a large group.

You want to know why? Because it's fucking annoying when someone tries to talk to everybody in a large group. People who do this are attention whores who should have been loved more by their parents as children. They're making up for the fact that Grandpa used to touch them funny, and it pisses me off.

After being alive for 25 goddamned years, I think this is where New Jersey finally gets it right. It's not that people from NJ are fundamentally douchebags, it's just that we have our own way of dealing with being around too many people at once. This isn't a method that other people can understand, and they henceforth interpret our behavior as douchebaggery.

In reality, what NJ people are doing is perfectly sensible. When surrounded by a giant crowd of sometimes smelly, sometimes loud, often annoying people all the time, it can be a little disconcerting (to say the least) to recognize the completeness of the situation. When you're surrounded by too many people, it makes sense to be a little autistic... and this is why people think that people from NJ are douchebags.

But anyway, fuck them. What, like they're any better? Stay classy.

I am a Morbid Sumbitch

I hate to say this, I really do. But I find wakes very interesting. No, I'm not talking about the kind of wake that a boat makes. You know what I'm talking about - the death ceremony where funeral homes dress corpses up like mummified Barbie dolls and give people the opportunity to pray and talk in front of them.

Yes, I find those things very interesting.

If you're still reading, one, I'm surprised. Two, let me explain what I mean. It seems that over the past few decades, families only seem to come together (1) when someone gets married, and (2) when someone dies. I'm convinced that people enjoy themselves more during option (2), especially when the deceased wasn't especially close to them. And I think it makes sense; recognizing one's mortality really (and temporarily) changes people, for the better. I'm generally very stoic, but I can actually crack a joke or three at a wake. Then there's the alcohol. Irish wakes are particularly fun for this, and I've been to a few of them. I really enjoy sipping whisky out of a flask and singing songs where the only acceptable words are made up on the spot. I want one of those things when I croak.

Are people naturally kind? I don't know (and I don't think so). But I do know that when someone dies, you learn the truth about them. I've straight-up been to services where close relatives said of the deceased, "He/she was a real motherfucker." When my grandmother - who was a colossal pain in the ass - died, my family and I talked at great length about how annoying and mean she could be (to be fair, we also talked about how she was the best Italian cook, ever). Death ends a life, to be sure, but in its wake (Ha ha) it brings about this post-modern objectivity that I think is really damned accurate.

Death should terrify people. Sometimes, it terrifies me. I have these moments, right before bed, when I listen to my heart beat and think to myself, "Without fail, within the next eighty or so years, this modified bio-organic pump is going to stop beating and I am going to die. The interconnected neural network representing the thoughts, feelings, and goals that I've collected throughout my life is going to stop firing. It's all going to just go away."

But this is not what people think about at wakes, I think. Wakes inevitably (unless, you know, your family sucks) turn into a celebration of those who remain alive. Distant relatives reconnect and re-network. Memories are shared. And that, ultimately, is pretty damned cool.

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OK, who needs another picture of a cute puppy? That's right... YOU do.


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Stay classy. My next post will be from a different state... OF MIND!

"That's Poker"

Anyone who plays poker has heard the phrase I chose to title this entry one time too many. Anyone obsessed with poker has heard it hundreds of times too many. Its usually uttered after some cretin goes completely against the odds and wins a hand, oftentimes to knock the other player out of a tournament. Which means if you're both a)obsessed with poker and b)play online, you've probably heard it thousands of times too many.

But, while I could think of a multitude of reasons why this phrase should be banned, one would be that its plain WRONG. Those instances where someone beats the odds are not poker. They happen in poker, but they are not the essence of the game. Even though at times it may seem that way.

So I think I figured out what poker is, in the most basic example possible. This is a question posed by donkeytest.com, so I'd like to credit them with the inspiration for this post. But really, I think I did most of the legwork.

Let's say you flip a coin 10 times, and each time it comes up heads. What are the odds the next flip will be tails? Instinct says "really high," reality says 50% because the previous 10 flips have no influence over the current odds. This is the gambler's fallacy. Donkeytest asks this question to see if you understand this. But I think this situation illustrates poker in this way:

What do you do in this situation if you can place a bet on the next flip?

Choice A is that you can place a bet on either side to come, and win 50% of the time, breaking even in the long-run. This is more or less blackjack, if you're playing correctly (I know, I know, the house technically has a 2% edge in blackjack, even if you play perfectly).

Choice B is that you find out if the guy you're betting with is under the influence of the gambler's fallacy. You say, essentially, "Man, I know that next flip's going to be tails, but if you give me 2:1 odds on it I'll take heads." To re-iterate a phrase, 'That's poker.'

Are you guaranteeing yourself victory on the next flip? Absolutely not. In fact, you haven't increased your chances of victory in any way. But you've increased the rewards for victory, and that's what matters in the long-run. Is this a perfect definition of poker? No, but its close. If your opponent is not influenced by the fallacy, you run your 50:50 odds with him, break even, and move on to the next guy. If no one is influenced by the gambler's fallacy, you have to talk some more game, like maybe point out flaws in the coin which might make it more likely to come out tails(see also: bluff). If you want to win big in this scenario, though, you need to find that guy, even if its only one, who believes that next flip just has to be tails and has deep pockets.(see also: plays like crap and is willing to rebuy).

There are three types of people in this world:
1)Those who say "If I'm not increasing my odds, I'm not wasting my money." The good ones here are cheap, the bad ones are cheats.
2)Those who say "Isn't that hustling the guy who doesn't get it?" The good ones here are charitable, the bad ones are liberals.
3)Poker players, who say "I get it, when can I start?" The good ones here are rich, the bad ones move to choice 1 or 2.

You see, poker players tell each other 'good luck,' but only the bad ones are talking about having cards fall their way. The good ones know that 'good luck' means finding that guy with a nasty gambler's fallacy and deep pockets.

That's poker, kids, and if you still want to play I'll see you at the tables.

I <3 The Olympics

Sup y'all. If there's a timestamp on this post, it'll read "Not extremely early in the morning but still way earlier than Scottery usually gets to work," because I'm turning over A New Leaf by going to bed at a reasonable, human time (midnight) instead of my comfortable usual (4 in the morning). Thus, I am here several hours before usual, and it turns out that my daily schedule was not far off from my coworkers', since I'm the only one here.

I'm going to make this post about the Olympics. However, unlike most normal people, I will not post about the Olympics in general -- the pagentry, the nationalism, the struggle and triumph and defeat -- but about three separate, semi-unrelated things that I have seen since the start of the games that I found interesting. Since I don't watch the Olympics, these events will probably be old news to anyone with even a passing interest in the games. Nonetheless...

First up: The Lance Armstrong of Swimming, Michael Phelps. The man has won (at last count) 11 medals in his career, more than any other human in history. He has to take drug tests between almost every event, but I think it would be more accurate to take gene sequencing data to make sure that he is not, in fact, a dolphin. However, all of his acts -- his unexpected rise to fame at the last Olympics, his subsequent DUI, this year's continuation of that fame, his ability to keep his swimsuit in the no-man's land between "appropriate for NBC television" and "gay porn" -- pale in comparison to what happened during the 400m freestyle relay. I have never felt as patriotic and as willing-to-bash-the-French as I was after watching this event. To set the stage: The French were smack-talking America, saying they would crush us in the event. Let me repeat that: The French said they would crush America. So what happened? The last swimmer of the 4-man relay, Jason Lezak, who began the last stretch of the race almost a full body length behind the French swimmer Alain Bernard, pulled ahead to out-touch him at the wall. He won by a distance of what Olympic scholars refer to as "a pube." Oh and by the way, they ran the race in 3 minutes, 8.24 seconds, erasing by almost 4 seconds (which is like, a year in swimming-time) the world record of 3 minutes, 12.23 seconds, set the night before by the American B-team. Sore Loser Amaury Leveaux, one of the French swimmers, said, "A fingertip did the victory... It is nothing." Fuck you. America took away your hopes and dreams with a fingertip. In the space of a finger, we (once again) crushed your hopes at greatness. Now go cry into your wine and shut the fuck up while Willie Nelson plays in the background about how awesome we are.

Second up: George Bush. Now, people like to hate on everything he does. And I admit, I like to hate on a lot of what he does, because a lot of what he does is retarded. However, it turns out that when he's not acting as president and is on vacation, well... he might be a lot of fun. Case in point: The majority of the pictures I've seen of our illustrious leader have been in one of two situations: 1. Looking bored and 2. Posing with hot chicks. I've only dug up pictures for the latter, because seriously who cares about him looking bored?


Look at him there. That's the women's softball team. Check out that chick he's hugging, and the one behind him who playfully slapped him on the back and put that white mark on him. That girl is cute as all hell. Pretty pimp if you ask me.



Speaking of pimp, this picture is pretty boss. For one, the Americans wore some pretty classy threads to the opening ceremonies, making everyone else in their "native garb" look ridiculous (THAT'S RIGHT I SAID IT, TAKE A BURN NATIVE CULTURES!!!). Even those countries that didn't show up in traditional dress seemed retarded, what with their fuschia-and-salmon-colored-ties-and-blazers. But besides that, I imagine the run-up to this picture went something like this: "You there. Yes, you, Women's Track and Field team. Come crowd around me and take a picture. I know you probably all hate me and my policies because you're all Godless liberal tree-hugging bisexuals (hopefully), but you're going to take this picture and love it, because I'm President of the Motherfucking World and you'll tell your grandkids of the day you got close enough to cop a feel from the Buttocks of Freedom."


Believe it or not, Bush is in this picture. Look up, and to the left. THERE he is. He's asking to be picked for their team or something, but looking goofy as all hell -- which I interpret as "exceedingly normal behavior for a man in the presence of the hotness that is the Women's Volleyball team." It's kind of disarming and amusing and, well, what regular people act like in that situation.

Which brings me to item 3 of this discussion. Did you know that the volleyball tournament has cheerleaders? I challenge you to find a sport that is less in need of cheerleaders than volleyball. I mean, glance again at that picture up there (in case you weren't already). That is an athlete in the sport. Why would a sport with players as hot as women volleyballers (hee) need cheerleaders? I imagine a smoky board room somewhere at Olympics Headquarters where a fat suit says, "This volleyball thing is good. It's got mass-market appeal. But it's missing something." A yes-man to his right says, "You're absolutely right. Something's missing." Fat suit: "Is there some way we can get hot women in bikinis to dance around?" About-to-be-fired guy in the corner: "Um, well, the players themselves are hot women in bikinis..." Fat suit: "You're arguing against an idea that increases the number of hot women in bikinis. You're fired. The players don't dance. We need cheerleaders." Yes-man: "Brilliant!"


Well, that's about the full extent of my knowledge of the Olympics this year. I'll probably find out some more stuff in the days to come. For the time being though, adios.