An Ode to the Brick City

So as my name suggests I am from Jersey... born and raised. I'm currently living in the largest city in the Dirty Jerz... Newark... BRICK CITY! Now I know you may be thinking that the larger the city the more homicides. I'm here to tell you that we lost that race to Camden. Way to go you little over achiever you. I moved in about 18 months ago and shortly after I saw a billboard that announced how many days the city went without a shooting... we maxed out at 33. I also noticed that I wasn't really able to walk more than 10ft without tripping over a homeless person or being asked for change from someone else on the street. The first couple of times I was asked I gave change to those that asked for it when I had it, because, despite the fact I'm in law school, I'm not completely heartless. I find no problem in helping people that are legitimately hungry, but there are also those that will promptly use the money for cigarettes/booze/drugs. I soon developed a litmus test for those that are seeking money for illicit reasons.

1. They begin their pitch with "Can I talk to you a minute..."
2. or incorporate "My mother just died and I need money to buy a train
ticket..."
3. "I'm not a bum" --> then you're a crackhead
4. They walk by past a crowd of people but only ask the white
people for money... if you were really hungry you would ask everyone
5. They persist trying to get money from you after you offer them the
address of a shelter that offers a meal and a bed for the night

The psychology of this impressed me, because who couldn't sympathize with someone that lost their mother. But when you hear that 10 people in a 1 block radius had mothers that died in like 3 days I'm sorry but I would like to speak with your crackhead union officials that gave you this line so that I can call shenanigans. They don't even work to perfect the argument, because once I realized what was going on I began to mess with them. "Oh that's terrible, what did she die from?" If they manage to answer I just keep bombarding them with follow up question after follow up question, inventing sub-categories of the disease to get them to admit the are lying. Even used car dealers develop their sales pitch to sell you that 1990 POS you just bought. You may say that I am cruel for putting them through this, but by this point in the pitch I have directed them to a shelter for food/place to sleep and said I have no change on me. I usually don't have any change on me anyway because everything at school is really overpriced and I try not to buy anything there, if I have to I use my credit card and this actually serves a dual purpose on top of not wasting money, it also allows me to answer truthfully to the fact that I don't have any change on me when approached in the street.

Also, I am currently living off loan money that I receive at about 8,000,000% interest so that .25 or whatever it is that you think I can spare for this person who is down on their luck, or off of their high, when it comes time to pay back my loan, will cost me about $3.50. I refuse to feel bad when you know damn well that you would not give out paper money to someone on the street. This is not a case of borrowing money, I'll never get it back, and if I caved to everyone that asked me for money in Newark i would not be able to pay my tuition. If someone actually walked up to me and said "hey can I have $5 so that I can get I high" I would give it to them as a reward for their honesty. I also think that the CU (Crackhead Union) has assigned its members the corners upon which they ask for money, so that when the professionals leave their building for lunch they can conveniently dispose of their change after buying their food. I, however, do not have income, only debt accruing, rapidly. I cannot afford to give change to the same 5 people every day on my way to and from school.

I have also recently learned that there is a 0 tolerance policy for people caught dealing drugs in the "downtown" area of Newark, which consists of the area between broad street and Newark Penn Station (my apt, school and the prudential center), and promises a trip to the emergency room before they go to the holding cell. So the drug dealers, like lions hiding in the tall grass to stalk the gazelle, stand at the bus stops camouflaging themselves with the people who actually are waiting for the bus on broad street, buttressing themselves up against the border but not daring to cross it, not unlike the Hamsterdam set up in "The Wire." I'm sure by now the police have noticed that the same 5-10 guys are standing at the bus stop all day, when every bus for that stop has passed several times over. When I am forced to walk in that area I'm asked if I am "up" several times and all I can say is "There is a cop not 50 ft from you directing traffic, what are you thinking?" This was the essence of Hamsterdam in the show, stay in these low impact areas without being violent and you can do whatever else you like with impunity. All I know is that tomorrow when Newark riots down broad street, in celebration of Obama's inauguration, the dealers and the crackheads both will either get trampled or have a feeding frenzy on their hands. So good luck to Corey Booker in continuing to improve Newark and hail to our newly elected Overlord Obama.

On "Miracles" and the 24-Hour News Cycle

3:30 PM, Thursday, January 15, 2009, Manchester Airport, Manchester, New Hampshire, USA.

When I'm able to, I always fly on Southwest Airlines. They have above-average seat room, they offer free soda and peanuts, and - best of all - they have an open seating policy. In a brilliant business move reminiscent of true capitalism, Southwest fliers who print their boarding pass online reserve a seat in line (in the order in which they sign online and print the pass). Because I'm a neurotic flyer, and have a thinly-veiled fear of dying in a horrific plane crash, I always sign online as quickly as possible to reserve an early seat in line. This always puts me in the "A" group, which boards first and puts me in my lucky seat (7C, on the left aisle side, right next to the engine on the Boeing 737-500).

At this precise moment, however, I am waiting to board a flight to Jacksonville, Florida, alongside 50 other nervous passengers, silently watching a horrific scene on the airport terminal's large TV. It appears that a commercial airliner, a US Airways jet flying from LaGuardia to Charlotte, NC (a flight I once took myself, a few years back), had crashed into the Hudson River. The crash resulted in killing everyone on board, I am certain. When airplanes crash land into water - especially when they crash land into 33 degree water, with the air temperature in the mid-teens - nobody ever survives this sort of thing. This is absolute fact.

The passengers around me seem to think along the same lines that I do, because they are grim and absolutely silent. The dude in front of me nervously scans his BlackBerry for news, but out of some macabre mixture of politeness and not wanting to know what happened, I don't peer over his shoulder for the death count. At this moment, I am ready to fly. I am certain that I no longer fear my own death by airplane. No way this happens twice in one day.

What I do upon boarding the plane is text message my Mom. This is funny, because Moms don't usually text message. But my Mom does, and I text her to let her know (a) there's been a horrible plane crash in the Hudson river, and (b) I was not on board that particular plane. This is important, because if my Mom were to turn on the TV news at any point while I am in the air, she would immediately think her son died - in the way he always imagined.

This is important also because I'm the sort of person who craves facts. I ask her how bad the crash was. Before the plane takes off, I find out there are no fatalities. I text back "WOW", and soon I'm instructed to turn off my cell phone. Before my plane landed safely in Jacksonville, I sip two Diet Cokes and read GQ.

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Other people, far more eloquent than I, have already condemned modern society's reliance upon tragic sob stories in order to reveal our individual, concealed feelings. I won't parrot these remarks. Nobody needs to know where I was on 9/11, because it isn't important. The story that I just wrote, though, makes me a hypocrite. Because, just like on 9/11 when we all capitalized on horror to make ourselves seem human, I think that a simple "miraculous" plane crash is allowing us to capitalize on hope to do the exact same thing.

What I'm focusing on now is the near-constant news coverage of this "miraculous" event. In doing so, I don't want to understate how amazing it was that nobody died in the plane crash. Over a hundred people are waking up today having thought they were going to die, but having actually lived. These people are going to treat their kids, spouses, and coworkers better, and they're going to have a story for the rest of their lives (one that will certainly get a few of the passengers laid, and more power to them).

But, so far as news stories go, it's as exciting as that one time I had Ace-King suited and flopped four of a kind Aces. Actually, it's just like that one time I flopped four of a kind Aces. All the requisite skill was there. The pilot knew what he was doing and landed the plane perfectly so that it wouldn't sink. All the requisite luck was there. The engine failed at just the right time such that the plane could crash-land in a highly populated river, close to ferries and rescue boats. The statistical context was there - the laws of physics said that a successful crash landing in water was at least theoretically possible (even though planes that ditch in the water usually tend to sink).

Because of this, the amount of news this "miracle" generated made me wonder. It made me wonder whether all this crap with the economy in crisis, people losing their jobs left and right, etc., is starving us for good news. The people who decide what goes on the news are human and therefore biased, no matter how objective they think they are. They've likely had a really rough year, and there's little doubt in my mind that yesterday's "miracle" became The News of the New Year because we're all rooting for everything to turn out all right.

I'm visiting my dad in Florida this weekend, and he was so excited about the news this morning that he TiVo'd one full hour of the "Today" show's plane crash footage. (NOTE: I think that earlier this morning, the "Today" show devoted its' entire four hours to yesterday's plane crash.) My dad, like many Americans, has lost a third of his nest egg within the past four months. Like many Americans, my dad is completely pissed off about this fact. Regardless, he was actually excited to watch the news this morning. So even though I'm a Godless curmudgeon and I do not believe in miracles, I suppose good news counts for something these days.

Stay classy out there.

In Defense of Unused Entertainment: An Ode to Bookshelves

Recently, I started cleaning my domicile. But this isn't regular cleaning: the goal is to reduce the number of objects I have in my everyday life so that when I eventually move again, I have fewer things to bring. Getting rid of old clothes, old computer parts, and so forth. But one thing I cannot reconcile is getting rid of my books. I have two bookshelves filled to the brim, and that's not counting ones lined along the floor or piled up in corners. I could probably start a small library with the number of books I've collected.

Some of these books haven't been read all the way through, and some I haven't even read at all. So naturally, when I mention that I'm cleaning, I draw fire from several angles (mother, significant other, significant-other-in-law) all of whom immediately -- not unlike HITLER -- target my book collection for exile to the attic or, worse, the trash. And I can't bring myself to do it. My brother is also facing criticism regarding his own book collection, and from this exceedingly small sample size and my own mild sexism, I have formed the following statement: Women do not understand the importance of a large collection.

Sure, the bookshelf may look like it's taking up a lot of unnecessary room, and it's stocked with things you've either already read or will never read, both of which indicate that the book does not belong in your possession. But that's missing the larger point: The bookshelf is a much-needed avenue for self-expression and evaluation. It takes a lot of time to build up a good bookshelf, and the reason is that each book you add to the shelves constitutes an individual act in your life. At one point or another, you made a conscious decision to buy or accept the book, and add it to your shelf. Thus, a bookcase represents a compilation of all the passing interests of your life. My own bookshelf has a number of topics, from psychology to politics to engineering and robotics, and even a few about gardening and cooking, all coordinated to particular phases or interests that I've had over the years. The bookshelf is a public expression of that history. It's something to be proud of: when people see your collection, they can see what kind of things you either have been or are currently interested in. They see what you know, or what you would like to know in the future, and in so doing, they know a little bit more about you as a person. This isn't a Facebook or Myspace profile that you slapped together in an "Oh, I bet I'll seem interesting if I say I like this!" moment, this is a pillar of your life meticulously constructed over several years, financed with real money-dollars (or some crafty book-stealing).

A common complaint is, "But you've never even read this! Why keep it if you're never going to open it?" See, that's the great thing about the bookshelf: it's not just a compilation of history, it's a set of possibilities for the future. Again, the purchase of a book indicates an interest. Maybe I don't have time for it now, but it says that at some point, I would like to add this to the list of books I have read. It's a direction in which I would like to grow; maybe not now, maybe not ever, but the shelf is as much about possibilities as history.

The same argument can be adopted for a movie collection. How many of us look with pride at our collection of DVDs, movie box sets, television series, and straight-to-DVD-movies-nobody-had-ever-heard-of? The box art, the plastic, the arrangement of the obelisk of entertainment all contribute to a collection that was slowly built up over the years, each piece added by you. Just imagine if some wild-eyed harpy decided that your DVD collection was taking up precious cubic footage (or yardage, in which case, bravo) and condemned it to die a slow, dusty death compacted into a lifeless, opaque DVD wallet, to be shoved under the coffee table, never to be seen again.

Fuck that! Your DVDs, your books, and your CDs should all be on prominent display. When people come over your home and see your collection, their attention should be drawn to it. They should feel compelled to peruse your selections, to make a connection through an obscure book or movie or CD. They should feel the bitter pangs of envy that they have spent so little time creating their own bookshelf. But even if nobody has ever seen it, even if you never have company over, the fact remains: Your collection is yours.

Be proud of your bookshelf, and in so doing, be proud of yourself.

Greetings from Winter Break

::takes shirt off, flashes:: WOOO HOOO!!!!!!

Ahem... sorry about that. Wrong break, apparently. Now back to your regularly scheduled blog.

I suppose that, in my own way, I work very hard at what I do. As you know, my job title is "Professional Student." I call myself this because, since 1989, I've taken a grand total of one year away from academia - this was, in many ways, a horrible year of my life. I found that I craved structure, but hated being bossed around. I realized that I respected the bottom line, but hated corporate babble-speak and generalized bullshit. Further, I came to understand that I didn't want a salary that peaked in the low six figures.

Hence, I applied to - and, by a mixture of incredible luck and poor judgment on the parts of others - was accepted into graduate school for Social Psychology. Graduate school has confirmed that I am (a) a good student, (b) technically savvy, and (c) perfectly capable of waking up at 10:00 AM every morning, even though I am 25 years old and most people my age have grown-up work and grown-up problems to deal with.

No, seriously. I am now at an age where lots of my peers are fucking PARENTS. With regard to the above statement, allow me to explain something to you. I am a responsible adult who pays his bills on time. I've never been arrested, and I don't even hold a balance on my credit cards. I'm a good student and, within the next 36 months, I will finish school and immediately begin to earn a salary that exceeds my every expectation. But there is no FUCKING way that I am even close to borderline FUCKING capable of the responsibility that comes with being a parent.

I like to drink alcohol. Somewhat consistently, I like to drink too much alcohol. Just as consistently, I like to bring my girlfriend with me to drink too much alcohol. When the Giants played the Packers in the NFC Championship Game last January, I drank enough alcohol to kill an Asian family of three. At my age, and because I don't have any kids, doing what I like to do is considered by others to be harmless; I'm "just enjoying my twenties." (NOTE: Even when I spend the entire next day alternately vomiting and screaming "GGGGGG-MEN!")

Now, throw a living newborn post-fetus into the equation. All of a sudden, I would need papal dispensation in order to get legitimately, shit-faced drunk, even on special occasions. All of a sudden, I'm no longer "just enjoying my twenties". Now I'm an alcoholic with a stained, sweaty wife beater and the Department of Youth and Family Services knocking on my front door.

My point is that having this particular responsibility is stupid, and this is why stupid people in this country are the ones having all the children. We're at the point where being truly responsible means not having any kids (or at the very least, waiting a damned long time to have kids). To illustrate this paradox, let's take Couple A. We'll call them Wade and Tawny. Wade and Tawny combine for 27 teeth and one GED. They live in a double-wide somewhere in the Deep South, 20 miles from the nearest person who voted for Obama.

Here's Couple B. (I'm not going to give this couple a name; you probably know 150 people like Couple B, dear reader, so you can come up with whatever names you see fit.) They are both college-educated, both work full-time, and they have a mortgage and two car payments. They both go to school at night for their respective Master's degrees. My question, and this is an easy question to answer, is: Who has more children, Couple A or Couple B?


OF COURSE it's Couple A, you toad-shitting nitwit. Couple A probably has three times as many kids as Couple B, and if you ask me, it's a damned shame. They have more kids because they're not using birth control, because they don't care about their careers, because they're on welfare. Couple B is responsible in a real way, and because they're responsible they're not procreating to have wonderful, intelligent children. In general, this sucks.

At this point, you might be thinking that I'm an asshole (or, even better, someone who favors eugenics). My answer to your line of reasoning is, yes, I am an asshole. And when you really think about it, as long as you're not killing people, forcing smart people to breed and forcing stupid people to be neutered or spayed (like dogs) isn't all that horrible of an idea. (NOTE: In a very under the surface sort of way, that last sentence was the most controversial thing I've ever written.)

If you're a moralist, you may now be asking, "What/who decides whether a person is stupid?" To answer the "who" question, it's going to be the people who write on this blog. (You'd better not piss any of us off. We are judge, jury, and the executioner of your reproductive organs.) To answer the "what" question, I figure we'll go with a standard IQ test plus an informal interview over coffee or baked goods.

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Since it's a Friday night and I'm writing a goddamned blog post, I might as well throw down the gauntlet and confess that I'm a pretty big loser. To that end, here's some of the entertainment I've been enjoying lately.

It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. Without a doubt, the funniest comedy since Seinfeld. I love the gallows humor, I love that nothing's off-limits. The writing and acting are fantastic (The McPoyle twins, pictured above, are absolutely repulsive in every way imaginable, to the point that I think the show's writers ration their appearances). Surprisingly, the blonde babe with fantastic comedic timing is married to the ugly dude, "Mac", in real life (NOTE: For some reason - perhaps my own latent chauvinism - hardly any other women have comedic timing. This is why men are much, much funnier than women, and it makes absolutely no sense).

Dexter. Psychologically intense, this show makes you actually root for a serial killer. To be honest, I've always sorta rooted for the bad guys in movies. Remember in "Goodfellas" when Ray Liotta's character (in voiceover) refers to Robert DeNiro's character as "the sort of guy who roots for the bad guys in movies", as if this were the worst character trait imaginable? I suppose this was tongue-in-cheek, since anyone who loves "Goodfellas" by definition loves to root for bad guys in movies. Still, nonetheless, wouldn't the following description for DeNiro's character be better: "Demonistic serial killer who enjoys watching the people he murders for personal gain slowly die"?

Degrassi: The Next Generation. You have to put on "The N" to watch this show, but you will be rewarded. (NOTE: "The N" is the Nickelodeon teen network, for those of you who are neither "Degrassi" fans nor about to show up on Dateline NBC.) DG:TNG (I've always wanted to use that for something that isn't Star Trek) is a Canadian teen drama, and BOY is there drama. Everything from school shootings, to teen pregnancy, identity issues, crime, sex, drugs, you name it, is on this show. They use a large ensemble cast - no other show I've seen besides "The Wire" does this so well - every character has a story line and... well, issues with growing up.

Some other, random, awesome tidbits about "Degrassi": (1) Because the show is Canadian and produced for a native audience, there are some things that seem slightly out of place. For instance, everyone loves hockey, there's a lot of snow, and many of the main characters are afraid of the dark. In addition, people speak in Canadian accents, if ya know what I'm talkin' aboot. (2) "Clerks" director and fellow Middletown, NJ-ian Kevin Smith is a huge fan of the show, to the point where he and Jay appeared on several DG:TNG episodes to produce the fictional "Jay and Silent Bob Go Canadian, Eh?" movie. Awesome stuff, and definitely something you should watch.

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OK, I'm off to shoot a Yeti and club a few baby seals now. BRRRR, it's cold out there. (NOTE: Actually, this is untrue. New Jersey has two, completely different climates. The northern and western parts of the state are in one climate, which is characterized by cold, snowy winters and warm summers. The southern and eastern parts of the state are in another climate, which has cool, rainy winters and hot summers. I'm in the "rainy winters, hot summers" climate, which is awesome in the summer but sucks in the winter. Oh, well, it beats Massachusetts.)

Stay classy out there.

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.