in and out

i've often wanted to do one of these things, but here's the best i could do with 10 minutes and microsoft paint (that's right, real low-tech early 90s style):

i guess this was also an excuse to publicly display pictures of my friends in foolish situations. can you blame me? probably.

Eatonomics

I have a list several items long on topics I need to blog about but have not recently found the time to post as much I would wish. This post was first was on that list so I will begin here. My gut and its growth over the last few years has been a frequent concern of mine as those that have heard me whine about it well know. However, up until recently, I have refused to actually do anything about it and despite my residence at Grad Center for 2 years, I have never once used the Bear's Lair to exercise. As I approach manhood, however, 7 days away for those scoring at home or even alone (SportsCenter reference, just ignore), I have persuaded myself that it is time to return to proper shape.

As a good liberal, I fiercely believe that government intervention is the solution to all problems, so I decided to consult the trusty USDA food pyramid for help on my new lifestyle diet. However, as some of you may have heard, the goverment has done away with the old simple pyramid for a complicated, illegible version.

BEFORE

AFTER

Basically what must have happened is that the low-carb craze didn't fit in with the 6-11 servings of bread and pasta mandate on the old pyramid. Consequently, they made the new pyramid to simply confuse the fuck out of people. The way it works is you go to mypyramid.gov and enter your age, sex and activity level and then they give you a personalized pyramid with how much of what shit you should be eating.

For me, the really interesting part of the site is mypyramidtracker.gov where you put in exactly what you eat and exactly what you do (down to the very minute) and it calculates how many calories you gain or lose each day. For example, on June 23rd I ate:

SALT, TABLE (3 dashes)
CHEESEBURGER, MEAT w/ MAYO ON BUN (1/4 lb)
APPLE (APPLES), FRESH (1 large)
FRENCH FRIES, FROM FROZEN, DEEP-FRIED (30 crinkle cuts)
BARBECUE SAUCE, LOW SODIUM (1.5 packets)
CORN, COOKED, FROM FROZEN (1 cup)
BUTTER (1 pat)
TWIZZLERS (25 bite sized pieces)
WATER (16 fl oz)

and I did:

TYPE - ACTIVITY - CATEGORY - METS - LEVEL - MINUTES - CALORIES

CALISTHENICS (E.G., PUSHUPS, SITUPS), VIGOROUS	LEISURE	8	VIGOROUS	15	224
MILD STRETCHING	LEISURE	2.5	LIGHT	15*	48
COOKING/FOOD PREPARATION - STANDING OR SITTING	HOME	2	LIGHT	30*	64
NON-FOOD SHOPPING, STANDING OR WALKING	HOME	2.3	LIGHT	20*	55
SITTING QUIETLY AND WATCHING TELEVISION	HOME	1	LIGHT	215*	♠
SLEEPING	HOME	0.9	LIGHT	600*	**
SITTING - STUDYING, GENERAL, READING / WRITING	HOME	1.8	LIGHT	30*	51
SITTING - IN CLASS, NOTE-TAKING/CLASS DISCUSSION	HOME	1.8	LIGHT	205*	350
RUNNING, 6 MPH (10 MIN/MILE)	LEISURE	10	VIGOROUS	20	384
DRESSING, UNDRESSING (STANDING OR SITTING)	HOME	2	LIGHT	20*	43
GROOMING (E.G.PERSONAL HYGIENE), SITTING/STANDING	HOME	2	LIGHT	15*	32
SHOWERING, TOWELING OFF (STANDING)	HOME	2	LIGHT	20*	43
WALKING, 3 MPH, LEVEL, MODERATE PACE, FIRM SURFACE	LEISURE	3.3	MODERATE	45	221
WALKING, 4.0 MPH, LEVEL, FIRM SURFACE, BRISK PACE	LEISURE	5	MODERATE	10	85
TYPING, ELECTRIC, MANUAL, OR COMPUTER	LEISURE	1.5	LIGHT	180*	192

so when you take the calories I ate minus the calories I worked off it works out to:
1677 Calories intake - 4193 Calories estimated energy requirement = -2516 Calories.

There are approxminately 3500 Calories in a pound so on that day I lost about .72 lbs. If I did that everyday for a week, I'd lose 5.03 pounds.

As I am taking 2 Economics classes and working on an Economics research assistantship I am constantly viewing the world (and myself) in Economic terms (a trend I will continue to discuss at a later point). Barring market failures, I would expect negative (or positive depending on how you view it) returns on this investment. I figure a continued deficit in my gut could lead to higher interest rates in BCE bonds.

Update: I weighed myself on the industrial strength scale at the Ratty loading dock today and I weigh 201 lbs. (Compared to the 215 I weighed at the end of the school year.)

I myself prefer Sun, Sea, and Socialism.

Today I was at the dry-cleaning place next to Bagel Gourmet, dropping off a couple pairs of pants (pants that I probably won't be wearing for the rest of the summer anyway, because they're wool and the weather's finally getting hot). I noticed that the cashier--a friendly-looking teenage boy--had a copy of José Saramago's Blindness next to the register. The paper receipt he was using as a bookmark indicated that he was almost finished with it.

Now, when I read Blindness in my AP English class in high school, I was thoroughly impressed by it. I wrote a rambling, overwrought paper about its connections to Camus' La Peste, and I engineered a group presentation in which our classroom was transformed into a feuding roomful of the temporarily blind, with me shouting passages from the book via a portable PA system. Which, in retrospect, was probably overkill.

Anyway, I then noticed that the cashier was wearing a t-shirt from a lacrosse camp whose logo read "God-Family-Lacrosse." Was he grudgingly reading the book for a school assignment, or was Saramago for him somehow compatible with this particularly abhorrent facet of American culture? Though it's logically flimsy, my faith in the idea that literature makes one a better person is inseperable from my belief that a 'better person' is one for whom there are more just and humane ideals than God, Family, and Lacrosse.

Coincidentally, he also had a copy of Ian McEwan's Atonement, which I actually started last week but have laid aside for the moment. At least from this brief taste of McEwan, I think he's a bit too polished and boring--but I hear Saturday's good.

eventful 24 hours

well, as the title suggests this has been an eventful 24 hours including (but not limited to): wall-ball ("watermelon rules"), massive social awkwardness, the providence police searching for a grey ford (like my car) for being involved in a shooting that i was driving past 30 minutes after the fact, kickball and deep fried snickers.

before going any further here's a picture of the deep-fried-snickers project:


as for my run in with the law, chris, brandon and i went in my car to drop someone off at her house a few blocks away (yeah we're that lazy). it was about 3am or so. on the way there and on the way back we saw police lights flashing up ahead of us and though no more of it than "damn, i hope they don't pull us over".
this morning all brown students got an e-mail excerpted below:

"The Brown Community should be aware of a shooting that occurred at the
intersection of Angell & Brook Streets, Saturday morning, June 25,
2005 at approximately 2:30am...A grey Ford [i have a grey ford explorer] was observed leaving the area after the incident, however it is unknown if this vehicle was involved in the shooting."

images of the propo taking me down to the station for questioning after seeing my car parked outside the house flashed through my mind. unfortunately, though, this is a "nathan story" and is anti-climactic: i called the police and they pretty much didn't care that i was driving a grey ford in the area of the shooting soon after it happened.
oh well, while this is probably the best outcome, it also makes for the worst story.

oh, we also lost pretty bad in kickball today, the BSRmadillos need some serious work on their hustle.

not paranoid

i think it's about time i post a non-picture oriented post, not to say this will be any less disappointing.

i was talking to someone about my recent glass-related misfortunes (getting cut up by a neighbor's broken table, my own window and a poster frame; 3 events over 3 weeks) which have left my hands and fingertips mildly and, with any luck, temporarily scarred. she mentioned that this has to signify something; it's not the kind of thing you let a fiction writer get away with.
i'm not sure what getting sliced up by glass 3 times over 3 weeks (trinities/triplets are significant?) would mean, but i'm pretty sure fate has just become a little more deliberate in its sense of humor of late.
rather than delivering unexpected events with sudden pushes, it's weaving several together and releasing them over time.
i think the next set has already begun since i've been glass-injury free; and this new set seems to involve mysteriously losing little things that i usually keep very close track of (guitar pick, the useful half of my door key).

and i still like to tell myself i'm not paranoid.

in other news, i had to pretend i knew how to update a (non-blogspot) website at work today in front of my supervisor. as soon as he left though i taught myself how to use dreamweaver and looked up some html code (i only really knew how to post images and links before). didn't get much done, but next time i won't have to feel like i'm lying when i'm asked to do some web stuff.

well that was thoroughly uninteresting for everyone but me (and i'm not even sure i'm that interested), but i had to re-assert my presence on the blog.
here's a little something for you to enjoy as a reward for making it through.

Steely-eyed machinations.

I don't want this to become the kind of blog in which it's okay to just link to an article and briefly discuss it, but I'm going to do just that, hoping that others won't follow suit. I mentioned this article, which is now a bit outdated, to Adam, and I'll now propose it as my irrational, insubstantial defense of the Spurs. One the one hand, the writer seems to know so little about basketball that even I notice it (Manu Ginobili doesn't tell us much about American whiteness, for example), but he's right about one thing:

Each time Darko takes the floor, Rasheed Wallace collapses in hysterics.

Surfing the Internets

I have to say that I've really enjoyed my time in the house thus far. It's sort of like being back in Unit 26 during freshman year. I think a large part of that enjoyment comes from the simple pleasure of having no responsibility. Classes start tommorrow but up to this point I've had a week to procrastinate on the small amount of work I do have. Recently, I've been spending a lot of time looking for ridiculous shit online and last night I found some blog-worthy sites (note: I was high at the time I found these sites so it is possible that my threshold for hilarity was lowered significantly).

First off, I enjoy putting random questions into Google and seeing what the answers will come out as. For example, how much chuck could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood? Well apparently this is the answer. Where can I get some Jesus Juice? Click here (yes, that really is Neverland from space). So as I continued to Google more questions, I decided to ask "Where should I go if I want to kill myself?" (At this point if you want to follow along I suggest you open up the links in a new window and then keep reading here.) On the right side, there is a sponsored link for Suicide Thoughts? - Take this quick test to find out the answers - www.GodTest.com. At this point I realized I'd hit right-wing nut job heaven. I suggest you click through the answers on your own and explore but specifically click here and then click a wrong answer. I also love the possible reasons why one might refuse the will of Jesus (I Do Not Believe in God, A Christian hurt me, or I'm Jewish). Also, check out the letters of hope (I especially enjoy "I'm Addicted to Porn" and the unibrowed gay guy).

From the religious right I moved on to the more general moral right of the Parents Television Council. I'd suggest browsing through some of the sections where they discuss the Worst of TV indecency. Ineveitably it includes all my favorite shows (Big Brother, Boston Public, Fear Factor and of course South Park especially). Reading through the quotes on the Cable TV Awash in Raunch article was particularly funny since I'd seen most of them on TV. And just in case you weren't there to be offended the first time they aired, they compile all the worst clips into a best of worst of television montage that is amazing. I love how you find the most disgusting shit at the sites whose very purpose is to censor it. A few of my favorite quotes from the site:

BESTIALITY
South Park the Movie: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut – Comedy Central 10/23/04
A cue card with the phrase "horse fuckers" on it shows a cartoon picture of a man with his crotch up against a horse's anus.
South Park – Comedy Central 11/20/02
Mr. Garrison puts Mr. Slave over a desk and shoves a glass tube into Mr. Slave’s rectum.
Garrison: “Now I’m going to put the glass tube into Mr. Slave’s tight ass.”
Mr. Slave: “Ow!”
Garrison: “Okay, now Butters, could you bring over Lemmiwinks [a gerbil] please?”
Butters: “Sure!”
Stan: “Oh, no! No! No! No! No! No!”
Garrison: “Now what do you think is going to happen when I introduce the element of the gerbil to the endothermic heat of Mr. Slave’s ass? Well let’s see.
Mr. Garrison inserts the gerbil into the glass tube in Mr. Slave’s rectum. The gerbil goes into Mr. Slave’s rectum and is shown trapped inside when the sphincter muscle closes. Inside Mr. Slave’s rectum are the skeletal remains of another gerbil.

1999 TOP 10 WORST
1) WWF Smackdown!(UPN/first season)Airing at 8:00 on Thursdays, Smackdown! exposes children to obscene, raunchy, and violent content on a weekly basis. Regularly featured characters included a pimp and his "Ho Train," a sex addict, and a porn star. Episodes contained women mudwrestling topless, homosexual innuendo, and drug references. One plot line centered on a wrestler's sexual dalliance with a 70-year-old woman. Violent content included characters being beaten with chairs, poles, pipes, 2x4s, sledgehammers, street signs, chains, a piano top, and hockey sticks, getting smashed through tables and windows, getting run down by a limo, rammed by a semi truck, and being set on fire. Foul language included all the standards and audible use of the s-word, and visible (though not audible) uses of "f--k" and "motherf--ker."
2) Family Guy(Fox/not ranked last season) Fox's Family Guy was unbelievably foul. This low-rated, raunchy, animated series centered on a couple, their two teenagers, and their precociously evil infant son. In its first full year, the show's creators managed to include nearly every conceivable obscenity, and references to every imaginable sexual perversion from incest to necrophilia. Series staples included nudity and references to pornography and masturbation. One episode this spring featured Peter Griffin giving his adolescent son his entire stockpile of pornographic magazines. The fact that Family Guy aired during the family hour makes it that much worse. Institutions such as the church and family were held up to ridicule on a near-weekly basis. Fortunately, The Family Guy was not picked up for next season. (Since then it has been renewed and is doing quite well, FOX, Sundays at 9pm -BE).

And one more favorite quote (added 6/20):
Stern told a female guest who had offered to be his slave, "First of all, I’m gonna need you to pee in a diaper…I wanna roll you up naked in a…carpet and put you in a shopping cart and wheel you around the station… I want you to eat [dog food] out of a dog bowl…I want you to bend over…while I throw eggs at your buttocks… your bare buttocks…and possibly eat peanut butter from Jackie’s [a regular Stern sidekick on the program] toes…You’re lucky I’m not asking you for sex." Just before smashing eggs on the guest’s buttocks, Stern told a colleague, "It’s fun to humiliate women."

If you've made it this far in the post and actually looked through all the sites you've probably been here for an hour so let me stop my rambling and let you return to your responsibilities. You see, isn't it fun to be aresponsible?

for your consideration...

sorry brandon, beat you to it

kickball

had our first kickbal game today (chris, brandon and i are on this team). our team, BSRmadillos, soundly defeated Daggers United despite their ball-stabbing antics. really, they stabbed the ball half way through the game. i think we only have like 4 or 5 games during the summer unless i'm reading the schedule wrong.
it was a fairly clumsy game on both sides (brandon and chris running into eachother screaming "i got it") but i guess we were the less clumsy team in the end.
everyone's off to boston/cambridge today, while i'm a-going home tomorrow (sunday) for the day.


the olney cup

oh, also it looks as if mike has finally signed up for the blog. while he doesn't live here just yet, he will be soon so he damn well better post.

Which side are you on?

SLA BBQ
Originally uploaded by cdhu.

Lately, Nathan has been demanding pictures. It makes people interested in reading the blog, he says. So I'll put my intended post--about my frustration with my own writing, and this frustration's place within the evolving forms of blog writing--on hold for now, in order to jazz up our collective project and to advertise an event I spent an hour and a half designing a leaflet for. (Click on the picture for a full-size version.) It could have been two hours, but we had to make a house trip to Captain Seaweed's, where we ended up discussing our fathers' occupations.

Ain't no party like a IG party...

No one has yet posted on the ridiculousness of last week's party so I think we now have enough distance from the festivities to begin to reminisce.

Top 5 moments from Party #1
5. Brian Lee shows up and relays a story of how he injured himself by kicking a boulder (at least it wasn't a swan this time).

4. A drunken Hu randomly makes (delicious) corn on the cob in the middle of the party.

3. Nathan and I resume our Beirut dominance and finish undefeated (4-0-1) after agreeing to a tie instead of going into double overtime.

2. Shockingly, I was not the first Beirut player to whip out the ass in order to distract an opponent. That honor goes to Josh Bauchner. Unfortunately for him, it could not compete with the power of Assholay and he was defeated like all the other usurpers to the throne.

1. Passing out at 12:30.

So I think this was a good start for Infamous Grouse parties but it was, of course, only a prelude to the festivities to come. Speaking of...

My 21st Birthday (7/4) Wish List
1. A "DENIED" stamp
2. A "PROBLEMATIC" stamp
3. A hockey stick
4. Hockey tape
5. LeBron James
6. Ben and Jerry's Oatmeal Cookie Chunk Ice Cream
7. Big Black Asses
8. Headphones
9. A naked kegstand
10. A V-Dub cup
11. The midget cop
12. A diaper
13. A hedgehog
14. Trifling people
15. Tape
16. 2100 pennies
17. A Project Manager
18. A squirrel eating out of a trash can
19. A 40
20. Permission to indiscriminately serve people
21. Corn on the cob

Don't worry, I don't expect y'all to get ALL 21 but if I don't get at least 18 I will be thoroughly disappointed. I will however try to make it past 12:30 for my own party.

Infamous Links: This is why I love reality TV: its fucked up... This is why I love the Japanese: they're fucked up ... After one gets fucked up, I wonder if this works... Check out the new TWC site (6/18 - corrected link - thanks Hu). I spent a shitload of time on it and they don't want to pay me so I'd feel better if at least I knew someone was enjoying it... I know for a fact that girls don't shit so this is very impressive. Clearly, I'm fucked up.

There's no escape when Cranston goes ape.

For some reason, the ProJo has seen fit to run a story about Brown political science professor Judy Lawless' joke of a Congressional campaign. She may be slightly more liberal than Jim Langevin, the incumbent, but her combination of egotism and political naivete--the arrogant innocence only a political science professor could cultivate--annoys me to no end. And then there's her campaign staff.

An assistant professor of political science at Brown University, Lawless moved to Rhode Island two years ago [and Cranston last week, since she didn't even live in Langevin's district --ch]. Her campaign manager is Adam Deitch, a former student of hers who graduated from Brown this spring with a bachelor of arts degree in political science. The campaign has four other full-time staffers, all under age 25.

That's right: Adam Deitch. Better known, particularly to the staffers of the College Hill Independent, as ringleader of the Undergraduate Finance Board and pathetic intramural softball captain.

It is at times like this that we can be thankful for the clannish insularity of the Rhode Island Democratic establishment.

The only response from Langevin's camp yesterday emphasized Lawless' newness to the district. "I welcome her to Rhode Island, to the Second District and to the race," Langevin spokeswoman Joy Fox said.

stuff you don't care about

since no one's posted in the last few days i figured i would. i've been listening to this 7" a lot lately:


the three songs on it are pretty good. though "love song #12" (side A of the 7") is better than "love song #7" (which is posted on cory branan's myspace site) it is not better than "love song #8" (from his album). the guy's a great writer but he needs to think up some better song titles.
the B-side tracks in general are probably better than the A-side.

uh, we have our first kickball game on saturday. it remains to be seen if i can properly kick the ball.

(note to roommates: see what happens when you don't post? you just get me talking about some shit no one cares about.)

found some pictures from scotland...

found some pictures from scotland while i was cleaning out the memory card. only one is slightly amusing:





i guess that last one is really from iceland.

i will never have sideburns again.

sadly, npr was my 3rd parent

it's shit like this that makes me want to work in washington

Our backyard.

We've got a patch of grass out back which was, according to Nathan, mowed yesterday. Whomever mowed it moved my old blue soccer ball to behind the back stairs--it took me about five minutes of searching, with my cleats sounding like high heels* on the pavement of the driveway, until I found it. After a couple decent kicks, I hit the fence with a left-footed half-volley and sent the ball over the fence, into the nextdoor neighbors' lushly tropical backyard. So much for that.

In other news, today at work I was almost certain that a middle-aged production editor was listening to Fennesz. She asked me if I wanted her to turn it down, and I said, "No, I'm actually kind of into it." But for all I know, it could have been something terrible. I've always wondered how people's cultural tastes evolve as they get older, and I'm not any closer to figuring it out.

* I have a pathological hatred of this sound, to the point where I'm tempted to openly glare at women wearing heels.

just a thought

i know this has nothing to do with this house, but here is confirmation that my friend paul looks kind of like our sitting president.


ok, well you probably don't agree.

It Begins

I must admit that I'm a bit confused where to start. What is the blogxperience that I as a blogger am responsible for conveying to you, the public. I guess I should begin by understanding our readership. Who reads blogs anyways? Why? Can this be used to pay for my General Tso's and 40's habit?

Personally, I only read three blogs. First, and foremost, I check out the reality tv weblog daily for all of the latest reality TV news. Having lost my blog hymen, the reality tv weblog actually led me to my second blog encounter, TOO MUCH INFORMATION. TMI comes courtesy of Jake Bronstein of (former) FHM editor-at-large and Road Rules. It simply recounts his daily adventures of trife with tons of pictures as explanation/evidence. This page led me to my final blogsession PostSecret (which all of you should check out if you get a chance). PostSecret is an online project where people from around the country send in postcards with their deepest secrets and the best are posted online. Some of them are really silly while others are really intense and poingiant.

I don't really consider the reality tv weblog to be a blog so given my other two blog favorites, I guess I like to read what's going on in the heads and lives of interesting people. Assuming for a second that I'm interesting, I guess that my part of the blog could just be what's going on in my life. Political blogs also tend to be popular and y'all know I've got some political shit to say so expect that too. Finally, since this is the house blog I will comment on the general tenor of the house and make insulting comments and back-handed compliments about my housemates. So let's get it going...

Today I wore a purple shirt.

Kartik often questions my masculinity, citing such evidence as my proclivity for reading in bed, my love of felines, and my passive-aggressive approach to interpersonal conflict. To this he can add my chosen career path.

Publishing is an overwhelmingly female profession, as I'm relearning this summer. In the past two days I've visited the men's restroom four times, and each time I've been the only occupant. Today in the copy room someone said, 'Oh, it's nice that you and one of the other interns are guys--that multiplies the number of men in the office by five.' I'm not sure how that works. Or maybe it was hyperbole.

on luck

i think my luck is bipolar.

one minute i'm at the lucero show with friends, the next i put my hand through my own window while trying to open it and shatter glass all over my pillow, then it goes right back the other way and i get a good part time job offer (venture consortium).
unfortunately since the last event was good, some bad luck lurks just around the corner i'm afraid. damn.



para·noia
Pronunciation: "par-a-'noi-a"
Function: noun
1 : a psychosis characterized by systematized delusions of persecution or grandeur usually without hallucinations
2 : a tendency on the part of an individual or group toward excessive or irrational suspiciousness and distrustfulness of others [luck]

Hedgehogs.

Abby
Originally uploaded by cdhu.

We've been talking for a long time about getting a hedgehog as a pet. Its name was to be Sidney Poitier, but Woonskwatuxet (a semi-conscious combination of the names of a Rhode Island river and city) seemed more appropriate.

Apparently I was wrong about the size of hedgehogs--the ones kept as pets in the United States are quite small and have to be kept in cages. They are also unbearably cute:

first postin'

well, i guess this is the first post on this thing. my old blog (www.gonescottish.blogspot.com) has been abandoned so now i can say things like "fuck ass" and such.

hopefully chris, kartik, brandon, mike and adam (in mike's room for the summer) will be a-postin' here pretty soon too.

here is a picture of the street on which we live: