Profiles in Being Black: Blackie and Toots

No pictures. No bullshit. No explanation. Their names were Blackie and Toots. That's how Black History Month ends for 3E. Peace.

Movies I should be ashamed of owning.

WARNING: AWESOME.

Found Magazine

Found

You can't spell EPIC FAIL without the EPL: Sunderland

Location: Sunderland, Tyne and Wear.

Nickname: The Black Cats, Mackems (as seen before, more of a name for anyone from Sunderland.)

Stately, Non-Commercial Stadium Name: The Stadium of Light. I'm not kidding, that's actually what their stadium is called.

Crest: Nightmarish. Lions as black as my soul attacking some Greek buildings.

Season So Far: Considering they're responsible for two of the four worst premier league seasons of all time, pretty damn good. One win from their last dozen games and they would equal the combined point total from those two seasons. Eleventh place and eight points clear of the drop. I'm going to do it, the first team in this parade of folly that I'll say is safe from relegation.

General vibe to a casual American fan: It's hard to forget those godawful 19 and 15 points seasons. Lucky for them, Derby went out and accumulated all of 11 points last year.

You can't spell EPIC FAIL without the EPL: Bolton Wanderers

Location: Salford, Borough of Bolton, Greater Manchester.

Nickname: B-Dubs. Not really, only I call them that. The Trotters.

Stately, Non-Commercial Stadium Name: Again...NON-COMMERCIAL FAIL. Reebok Stadium.

Crest: Streamers!

Season So Far: A lot better than last season. It took a fairly frantastic April and May to avoid the drop last go round but this year they've dabbled with the middle of the pack consistently. Although with the abundant parity, middle of the pack is still in the relegation fight.

General vibe to a casual American fan: Not much. It's hard not to think of Michael Bolton. Not a lot of character, not helped by their overbearing Reebok sponsorship, giving them a soulless, whorish feel. Tha Captain usually roots for their relegation.

Attn: Tri Epsilon members

We need to get some of these for all the brothers. Maybe we could start issuing them to new pledges?

Things today's calculus students can/can't do.

Can: Identify Popeye the Sailorman.
Can: Identify MC Hammer.
Can't: Describe the music video for "No Rain" in one sentence.
Can't: Tell me one movie that Ricardo Montalban was in.
Can't: Identify four Transformers from the original cartoons.
Can't: Name three Beastie Boys songs.*

*This gets worse. Someone asked me "Aren't they, like, a boy band?"

Black History Month III

There is a website for everyone in this world. For example, if you're a breastfeeding woman of color, do you need a website? Yes! And there's really only one thing you can call it.

I know that women who are breastfeeding have all sorts of particular problems they face, and I know black people have to deal with the lingering effects of racism. I guess it makes sense that someone should put these things together.

Walt Whitman

From here.

Profiles in Being Black: Rushton

Significance: Director of Residence Life.
Duties: Livin' below the 3E house. Hasslin' us. Crampin' our style. Tellin' Scott to get control of his suite.
Thanks, man. We might have thrown some shit down the stairway if you hadn't been there.

Tha Captainz first attempt at BLOG.

This isn't Tha Captainz first rodeo. This was. A few of the best entries shall be reproduced here. I decree it. Self-important, you say? Yes. Yes I am. Desperate for new features, you say? Tha Captain is never desperate. Needlessly speaking in the third person, you say? Eat shit.

02/16/2004: The first post! A fine start to any BLOG.

stardate 345234
halo! john is a work-out fiend. farts on my cheek.

3E Presents: Catchphrase Friday

You want to be the coolest cat on the block? You've got to have a catchphrase! With the weekend coming up, 3E is here to help. Every time somebody hands you a drink, or the waitress brings out your dinner, just yell out:

"Son of a bitch! What I gotta do to class up this [item]?"

Be the coolest guy around this Friday, 'cause it's Catchphrase Friday.

You can't spell EPIC FAIL without the EPL: Hull City

Location: Kingston-upon-Hull, East Riding of Yorkshire. Apparently one of the last places anyone in England wants to live.

Nickname: I'll give you a hint: it rhymes with "ligers."

Stately, Non-Commercial Stadium Name: NON-COMMERCIAL FAIL. Kingston Communications Stadium.

Crest: ROWR! You're a county high school from rural Mississippi!

Season So Far: At the beginning of the season it was Hull and not West Brom that everyone thought would be propping up the table. A groin-grabbingly good start to the season saw them flirt with the top of the league after 12 to 15 games. But just like Icarus, Hull built their Tower of Babel too high and Zeus turned them into a pillar of salt. Now the words "free fall" and "downward spiral" come to mind.

General vibe to a casual American fan: Before this season, no American fan had ever heard of them so it's hard to say. Hull was the largest city in England never have had the honor of top level football until this scrappy bunch won promotion to the premier league.

If an asteroid hits Birmingham, none of us survive

Ground Zero from Carlos Labs. Also.

Literalllllly

"This is a monumental project, but it's doable...It's about getting the money out in 18 months, to literally dropkick us out of this recession."

-Vice President Joe Biden

David Cross on the misuse of "literally."

Mildly related: Arrested Development movie appears to be a go.

From here.

Fortune Cookie Revisited: Summer 2008

Not quite sure when or why, but at some point (presumably after 3E's LR4?) I defaced this fortune.
Update: Overcoming tough times? Calling anything in my life a 'tough time' is laughable at this point. Better hold onto this one.

Let's see how things have progressed.

In 2 weeks, we'll confirm how wrong Tha Captain was. Keep in mind at all times that these are two-legged aggregate score match-em-ups where number of goals scored in the away match act as a tiebreaker. Also, never, never forget that in soccer, the home team is listed first.

Atletico Madrid 2 - 2 Porto
Advantage: Porto. Two away goals and heading back to the Estadio de Dragao. (Dragons!)

Lyon 1 - 1 Barcelona
Advantage: Barca. Lyon's goal was fluky. Barcelona will dominate at home.

Arsenal 1 - 0 Roma
Advantage: Gunners. The one English team I wouldn't really mind getting booted.

Internazionale 0 - 0 Manchester United
Advantage: Inter. Manchester United does get the second leg in the friendly confines, but there's no margin for error after not taking advantage of their dominance for much of the game.

Chelsea 1 - 0 Juventus
Advantage: Chelsea. Although Juventus could easily Turin it around!

Villareal 1 - 1 Panathinaikos
Advantage: Panathinaikos, I guess. I'm not really drinking the tzatziki-aid yet, though.

Sporting 0 - 5 Bayern
Advantage: Sporting. Soccer is a very complicated sport. You couldn't possibly understand.

Real Madrid 0 - 1 Liverpool
Advantage: Liverpool. In the safest position of the four English clubs.

3E endorsed?

Wal-Mart vs. Target: in moving pictures!

Wal-Mart

Target

via

Did you know this song was about LL Cool J?

From the increasingly vulgar collector's set

You can't spell EPIC FAIL without the EPL: Newcastle United

Location: Newcastle-upon-Tyne, northeast England.

Nickname: The Magpies (like the bird!) or Toon (like a weird way to pronounce 'town.')

Stately, Non-Commercial Stadium Name: St. James' Park.

Crest: MER-HORSES. I don't know what else I can say.

Season So Far: Not very epic. Pretty fail. Their defense is horrible and if it weren't for good goalkeeping (and they for some reason decided to sell him during January) they would be even worse off. As it is, they're cravat deep in the relegation meat pie.

General vibe to a casual American fan: Tottenham North. Let's call them the Clemson of the premier league.

Tuesdays with West

The sun landed hatefully on Wes's face, slipping like a cat burglar through the window and between the curtains. His face and eyes burned with the light. Beside him a beaked, pockmarked woman with dry, ugly hair breathed heavily. Her nipples, grotesque and mocking his poor decision-making abilities, peaked halfway out above the sheet. Wes could not immediately remember her name, nor did he ever want to. A small grey cat, curled at the foot of the bed, stared intently at Wes, who she did not know and did not like. He glared back wrathfully, certain that the cat had killed some poor small creature and temporarily stored it in his mouth, before defecating there. He was also sure, as he tried to open and close his jaw, that she had also deposited some sort of vomit-flavored spackle there as well.

Wes did his best to slip quietly out of the bed, made more difficult because he was still fully dressed and wearing both of his shoes, with the shoelaces tied together. What this suggested about last night's debauchery Wes refused to let into his mind for the time being; he was having a great deal of trouble thinking clearly, and some animal instinct in him recognized that all of his feeble powers of reasoning must be concentrated on escaping wherever it was he was. He dropped to the cheap carpet floor and quickly recognized that he was about to piss himself, whether or not he found a bathroom. Gingerly, Wes made his way out the door and down a small dimly lit hallway. He finally picked a door, resolving to urinate in whatever room it was. Fortunately for himself and the owner of the house, he picked correctly.

After relieving himself, Wes looked into the small cabinet mirror above the sink. His face was as bloated and swollen as a corpse, and his eyelids provided more the suggestion that he had eyes rather than any definitive visual evidence. There was a small cut above his right eye. Suddenly wobbly, Wes had to sit. He laid down the toilet lid and sat. Neither of his nostrils worked. By closing one tightly and alternately blowing and sniffing in the other, he managed some semblance of clearing his sinuses. In triumph he stood up and blew, flinging bits of mucous all over the sink and fixtures. The exertion of doing so, however, unleashed something dark and evil inside him, something better left alone. Almost before he knew it, Wes lurched over to vomit, splattering all over the still closed toilet lid.

Although he was disgusted and hurting and even more filthy, the act of releasing this evil gave him a sudden feeling of frenzy, as though he had snorted a line of coke cut with rock salt. He had to get out of this place, immediately. The windows of the bathroom indicated he was in a basement of some sort; he stepped out, headed upstairs, and made his way to the front door. He exited as quickly and quietly as he could.

Wes had only thought that the bedroom had been bright; the full power of the sun outside was a new kind of evil. He waved his hands blindly in front of his face like a madman. He knew exactly what a vampire felt like when it died. Wes surged forward to find some sort of relief, but the steps in front of the porch had other ideas. His body, perhaps seeing its chance to avenge the agonies heaped on it in the last twelve hours, refused to do anything about his fall. He fell forward limply, as would the victim of a sudden stroke. Fortunately, or not, the concrete sidewalk turned toward the driveway, and Wes survived, cushioned by the soft grass and impossibly pointy twigs. He lifted his head up and surveyed his surroundings. He recognized the street; the bar where his car was parked was only a few blocks away.

Moving incoherently down the sidewalk, Wes realized that he was muttering curses under his breath, filthy and magnificent curses using words he had never heard and acts he did not know could be performed. His voice seemed to be operating independently of his mind, and Wes listened in awe. He then realized that he was in front of First Baptist Church, and that the morning service had ended just five minutes ago, and elderly women in hats with flowers on them stared at him with their mouths hanging open. He put his head down, willed his mouth closed, and hurried his pace.

He saw the bar, O'Darryl's, and he hated it for allowing this sort of turn of events to happen to anyone.

As he turned the corner, Wes felt a rush of emotions: confusion, anger, sorrow. His car was gone. He looked up one block and down another, hoping he was wrong about the spot, but it was pointless; his car was not in sight. His keys were in his pocket. His car must have been stolen. But impossible! This was one of the brightest and busiest intersections in town; a thief would have been seen, been stopped. He must have moved it at some point, for some reason.

Collecting his thoughts, Wes crossed the street to find a place to sit. He came to rest in the McDonald's Play Pen. He sat like a pervert, hunched alone on a playground bench surrounded by screaming children in their Sunday best. Looking at his hands, he did his best to focus his attention entirely on the events of last night, clearing his mind of any distractions. He found that when he did so, his mind remained absolutely blank, an empty void. It was an unexpected and terrifying experience for a person who prided himself on his quick thinking and powers of retention. He could remember nothing.

Finally Wes decided he must walk home, which was not far, and find his roommate, Fern. He would have Fern drive him around town, however long it took, until they found the car. Planning this in his head, Wes absentmindedly walked through the CVS parking lot almost without noticing his car parked in the corner.

He crept up to it with the caution an aborigine might show approaching a downed helicopter in the Brazilian rain forest, touching the back fender and then jerking his hand away as if in fear of some unseen danger. It was his -- the hanging exhaust pipe and Cthulhu '12 sticker proved it. Feeling immensely relieved, he got in, but before he could start the car he noticed something on the hood. He got back out of the car. Someone had spray-painted on his hood with large, yellow letters:

"PUZZY MAGNET"

Tears came to his eyes. What kind of soulless degenerate would do this? Wes slammed his fist to the hood in anger and laid his head across his arm. It was then that he noticed for the first time the telltale hint of yellow paint on his right index finger.

He climbed back into his car. Upon starting, it produced the loudest music he or anyone else had ever heard. An untrained observer might have thought it was Ghost Face Killah, correctly. Wes jabbed wildly like an ape, temporarily forgetting how to turn off the stereo. Had he a gun, he would have immediately shot the radio, then himself. He finally managed to expel the disc, which he broke to pieces and in the process cut his hand.

He drove home crying and bleeding slightly. He limped up the stairs to his apartment and opened his door. He was shocked to find Fern wearing a business suit and an apron, stirring a pan of fried eggs. "Wes," he said, "I gotta run to lunch with the Bishop, but I'm making something for Natalie since she's kind of sick. She didn't want her cinnamon French toast; do you?" Wes could not have been more grateful; unable even to speak he sat at the table and began to eat.

"Hey," Fern continued, "some guys I went to undergrad with are coming in tomorrow night and I'm thinking we might do the pub crawl. You want to go? Mondays are half-price Guinness."

Wes finished chewing his toast. "Yeah, I think so. That sounds good."

Next event: May 23, 2009

World Beard and Moustache Championships

Black Doctor!

3E approves (especially before 8 AM)

You can't spell EPIC FAIL without the EPL: Portsmouth

Location: Portsmouth, Hampshire.

Nickname: Pompey. I don't know why or really even how you're supposed to pronounce this.

Stately, Non-Commercial Stadium Name: Fratton Park.

Crest: Deceptively newfangled, overtly Islamic, disgustingly simple.

Season So Far: They've been sellers in the transfer market and had a manager leave mid-season so it's not all that surprising to find them just a few places above the relegation zone.

General vibe to a casual American fan: Not much, they usually keep a low profile. Smallest current stadium in the EPL. They won the FA cup last year. Only been in the EPL since 2003. Were in the 4th tier as recently as the early 80's. Yep.

A learning moment

Example 1A: The testator A, specifies in his will that his estate is to be divided among his descendants living at his death in equal shares per stirpes. A has three children, B, C, and D. B is already dead, but has left two children (grandchildren of A), B1 and B2. When A's will is executed, under a distribution per stirpes, C and D each receive one-third of the estate, and B1 and B2 each receive one-sixth. B1 and B2 constitute one "branch" of the family, and collectively receive a share equal to the shares received by C and D as branches (figure 1).

Example 1B: If grandchild B1 had predeceased A, leaving two children B1a and B1b, and grandchild B2 had also died leaving three children B2a, B2b and B2c, then distribution per stirpes would give one-third each to C and D, one-twelfth each to B1a and B1b, who would constitute a branch, and one-eighteenth each to B2a, B2b and B2c. Thus, the B, C, and D branches receive equal shares of the whole estate, the B1 and B2 branches receive equal shares of the B branch's share, B1a and B1b receive equal shares of the B1 branch's share, and B2a, B2b and B2creceive equal shares of the B2 branch's share.

Per stirpes

Can there be any doubt?

That robots will soon destroy us in a Skynetesque war, I mean.

One

Two

Same as it ever was

I don't know, I've just been on a big Talking Heads kick lately.

Also I am not sure what is up with that baby picture, it is terrifying.

OH MAN IT'S AN UPDATE:

spliffs.

Adorable

Zooborns.

You can't spell EPIC FAIL without the EPL: Tottenham Hotspur

Location: Tottenham, North London borough of Haringey.

Nickname: Spurs. Not "the Spurs," just Spurs. Also Lilywhites due to their traditional white shirts and the Yids due to their large Jewish following.

Stately, Non-Commercial Stadium Name: White Hart Lane, the stateliest of all.

Crest: A cockerel standing upon a football. I'm biased, but I like it a lot.

Season So Far: By some standards, not so bad. But with this payroll and these expectations, 6 wins from 25 games and 16th place in the league transcends EPIC FAIL. This was supposed to be the primary challenger to the big four at the top of the table, but will now have to cowboy up to avoid being the most expensive second tier team in the history of the Football League. Somehow they've made it to the League Cup final but look to get murderdomed by a Manchester United side that's barreling towards a handful of trophies this season.

General vibe to a casual American fan: Big-spending underachievers who seem to overvalue their historical primacy in the footballing world. They're a mid-level team who like to think they're one of the high-fliers. A dash of little brother syndrome due to their local rivals Arsenal. You want drama? There's always drama. No fan base is more neurotic and no team is more schizophrenic. When I was a kid, I picked them as my team because I liked their name. Apparently it was destiny because they're pretty much the Auburn of the EPL.

3E Party Flyers

The Date: Octoberish, 2003

The Flyer:
The Party: It was (3)E-Fest. It was insane. Other flyers/t-shirts sported slogans like : "There is always the bottle." and a faux vodka ad: "Absolut Despair." It was billed as the biggest party of the year and sure, the knife duel will never be forgotten, but we went and topped it the next weekend cuz we were always outdoing ourselves.

yo, we are looking for a singer.................

About The Reverend Funk Connection
"Long ago, when mother earth was still in her infancy, there waged an epic war in the heavens. As the sun rose on the fourth day, victory was stolen and, amidst the bloodshed, the Gods of Funk were banished to the realm of shadow and misery. There they lay for eons, consumed by inconceivable agony, waiting for the fates to take their course. For they knew that one day, five prophets would rise from the ash--born into a world led astray. Wielding only their divine instruments, the five chosen ones would catalyze a movement and unleash a groove of such awesome magnitude that it would shake the very fabric of the ether, dissolving the realm of exile and freeing the gods. The deaf will hear, the blind will see, and the lepers will GET DOWN! So goes the prophecy."

- Funkthusala 8:36

The Reverend Funk Connection's MySpace page.

Way more.

Ouch my eyeball ball ball ball ba ball ba ball ball

I'm not really sure what's going on here, but I really like the intro animation.

Garage Days Revisited: 03/29/2004

Submitted Title: “High Five!”

1. Patching holes in cabinets from poorly thrown darts: $5. Fixing hot tub contaminated with lake-water: $100. Fixing flooded Wave-Runner: $50. New taillight for trailer: $100. New front grill for Jeep: $200. Getting invited to lake-house next spring break: hopeless.

Ha! We’re assholes. Although... I jumped into a nearly freezing pool recently and I can somewhat relate to the bowel-gripping panic of needing to get the fuck out of freezing water as fast as possible. Charlie was well within his rights to flood that Wave-Runner. Also too, I’m certain I grossly underestimated every single one of those prices.

2. Upon returning from spring break, I noticed an excitingly fresh idea brought to the table by Valley Foods. Beef sticks and sunflower seeds in the Norton Campus Center Cafeteria (I’m still holding out after four years of not calling it by its less dignified, abbreviated name). Finally, beef without the hassle of putting it on a plate. Finally, sunflower seeds without the hassle of growing sunflower-seed-bearing-plants. Now, if only there were some way that I could publicly yet anonymously express my appreciation to the Valley Foods staff using the disposable products that they supply us…

WHAT YOU MEAN LIKE A NAPKIN BOARD???

Supreme Editor/Overlord Hallie bought me a beef stick and some sunflower seeds because she liked this article.

3. You know what would be a cool name for a band? The Meat Mistake.

Update: No, it wouldn’t.

4. Thank you, UConn. Thank you for overthrowing the reign of terror that was one win away from ending my basketball-watching days forever. This near-disaster illustrates why the NCAA tournament is fun for bracket pools and drama but is bad for determining a national champion. It’s entertaining to see a “Cinderella” team win a couple of games. However, each team plays thirty or so regular-season games for a reason. These games should give us an idea of who the best three or four teams in the nation are. We shouldn’t need to throw another 61 or 62 into the mix. In college football, they only play eleven or twelve games and we know whom the best two or three teams are. The NCAA tournament will endure because of its popularity and inclusiveness. However, it’s champion is determined too much by seeding and freak upsets that can lead to a four or five seed never having to play a higher seeded team until the round of four or later.

UConn beat Alabama. That’s what the first part means. The NCAA tournament is a raging gimmick. Other gimmicks wear NCAA tournament pajamas.


5. Finally, I leave you with a BSC-localized non-issue. I am firmly against the next President of Birmingham-Southern changing our mascot. Despite there being no possibility of this happening, I am vehemently opposed to it. The panther, Felis concolor, also known as catamount, cougar, puma, and mountain lion has proudly represented our school for many successful and scandal-free years. And since this is, indeed a non-issue, it is a moot point that our mascot is not offensive or degrading to any race, species, or occupation like so many mascots are. Certainly, any panther would be proud that his characteristics of courage, cunning, and strength would be deemed fitting for a proud athletic tradition. Thus, since the thought of changing our mascot had not crossed anyone’s mind before this article, we the students of BSC, as well as panthers everywhere, can sleep well.

Wow, something I actually like. It was Juicebot’s idea. Only one installment of Garage Days left, look for it soon!

Unbelievable

Do you ever hear one of those stories, like about someone keeping an illegal Filipino boy as a slave in their townhouse, and are shocked because that's the sort of thing you imagine stopped happening years ago? This is that kind of story, from the Pulitzer-worthy Radley Balko.

Last year, two men that Hayne and West helped convict of murder in the early 1990s, Levon Brooks and Kennedy Brewer, were exonerated and freed from prison through DNA testing after serving more than 30 years combined behind bars. Both men had been accused of raping and murdering the daughters of their respective girlfriends. In what has come to be a pattern with the two doctors, in each case Hayne claimed to have found in an initial autopsy what other examiners missed: bite marks on the victim's body. He then called in West, a forensic odontologist (dental examiner), who definitively matched bite marks to the defendants. Partly because of the testimony from Hayne and West, Brooks was sentenced to life in prison, and Brewer to death (he spent 14 years on death row). DNA testing in 2008 determined that the semen found on both girls belonged to a third man, 51-year-old Albert Johnson. As Brooks and Brewer were freed, Johnson confessed to both crimes.

The Brooks and Brewer cases form their own forensics riddle: How could West and Hayne have definitively linked previously undetected bite marks on the victims to two men who didn't commit the murders?

Reason recently obtained shocking video from another Hayne and West collaboration that may shed light on the question. In 1993, the two conducted an examination on a 23-month-old girl named Haley Oliveaux of West Monroe, Louisiana, who had drowned in her bathtub. The video shows bite marks mysteriously appearing on the toddler's face during the time she was in the custody of Hayne and West. It then shows West repeatedly and methodically pressing and scraping a dental mold of a man's teeth on the dead girl's skin. Forensic scientists who have viewed the footage say the video reveals not only medical malpractice, but criminal evidence tampering.

West and Hayne have been working for the state of Mississippi for years, and it's not like this is the first time there has been controversy about them. That this is not huge national news tells me that two things in this country are broken, perhaps beyond repair:

1. The justice system

2. The news industry

Google Maps

Oh so clever.

You can't spell EPIC FAIL without the EPL: Stoke City

Location:Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire.

Nickname: The Potters, owing to Stoke's (apparently) famed pottery industry.

Stately, Non-Commercial Stadium Name: Britannia Stadium.

Crest: For some reason, I really like this one.

Season So Far: EPIC FAIL. Not really though. Currently sitting just above the relegation zone with 24 points, a total that most experts wouldn't have expected for the entire season. Got off to a decent start but it seems like the premier league regulars have realized the trick and put a stop to it. Expect relegation. Crashed out of the FA cup to a League One team.

General Vibe to a Casual American Fan: Long balls, long throw-ins, and bruising defenders. The classic recipe for success on a budget. Also, fans of other teams seem to think that everyone in Stoke is on welfare. Who am I to argue?

Mathematicians of the African Diaspora

"Comparing them by their faculties of memory, reason, and imagination, it appears to me that in memory [the Negro] are equal to the whites; in reason much inferior, as I think one could scarcely be found capable of tracing and comprehending the investigations of Euclid; and that in imagination they are dull, tasteless, and anomalous."
-Thomas Jefferson

"There is not a single mulatto who has done creditable scientific work."
-J. McKeen Cattrell, editor of Science (1913)

...and easily refuted here.

Just that kind of Soul Thursday

Remy Shand - Take A Message - MyVideo

A very long palindrome

"Dammit I'm Mad"
by
Demetri Martin

Dammit I'm mad.
Evil is a deed as I live.
God, am I reviled? I rise, my bed on a sun, I melt.
To be not one man emanating is sad. I piss.
Alas, it is so late. Who stops to help?
Man, it is hot. I'm in it. I tell.
I am not a devil. I level "Mad Dog".
Ah, say burning is, as a deified gulp,
In my halo of a mired rum tin.
I erase many men. Oh, to be man, a sin.
Is evil in a clam? In a trap?
No. It is open. On it I was stuck.
Rats peed on hope. Elsewhere dips a web.
Be still if I fill its ebb.
Ew, a spider… eh?
We sleep. Oh no!
Deep, stark cuts saw it in one position.
Part animal, can I live? Sin is a name.
Both, one… my names are in it.
Murder? I'm a fool.
A hymn I plug, deified as a sign in ruby ash,
A Goddam level I lived at.
On mail let it in. I'm it.
Oh, sit in ample hot spots. Oh wet!
A loss it is alas (sip). I'd assign it a name.
Name not one bottle minus an ode by me:
"Sir, I deliver. I'm a dog"
Evil is a deed as I live.
Dammit I'm mad.

See also: 2002

Transformers toy

That's right it's a Scion XB with freaking bat wings


I need some of those bat wings.

Here.

You can't spell EPIC FAIL without the EPL: Blackburn Rovers

Location: Blackburn, Lancashire.

Nickname: Um...Rovers.

Stately, Non-Commercial Stadium Name: Ewood Park. TRIVIA: The oldest continuous home of any premier league team.

Crest: You can see it, judge for yourself. Classin' it up with some Latin. Also: a plant!

Season So Far: EPIC FAIL, although it needs to be pointed out that every team in the EPL already has twice as many points as Derby accumulated all of last season. In 18th place but with a game in hand over the other stragglers.

General Vibe to a Casual American Fan: I read the news today, oh boy, 10,000 holes in Blackburn, Lancashire. The Beatles immortalized the town, but the team was nothing special despite being a founding member of the Football League until they bought a premier league title in the mid 90's. Think: Florida Marlins except they aren't an expansion team. They don't seem to to be the same class as Manchester United, Chelsea, and Arsenal, but they're the only other team to have won the EPL.

More than once I thought he was gonna drop

Man, I don't even trust myself to walk up long flights of stairs.

Mountain Dew Throwdown would be another good one

Pepsi is now selling two of its products with real sugar instead of high fructose corn syrup, and the names will be Pepsi Throwback and Mountain Dew Throwback. I'm pleased about this for a couple of reasons. I'm one of those anti-HFCS types to begin with, both on the principle of being anti-corn lobby but also for health reasons (which I admit I don't really know enough about to make an informed decision). But I'm also a little upset. Is Pepsi Throwback the best name they can come up with? That's stupid. At least it invites easy nicknames ("More like a Pepsi Throw-UP! Am I right?").

More importantly, my favorite soft drink, Dr Pepper, is still HFCS. The Cadbury people, or Snapple Group, or whoever they are, are already on my bad side for their incoherent timing in marketing the Dr Pepper flavors, particularly the sublime-but-discontinued Dr Pepper Berries & Cream. This would be a good way to get the all-important white graduate student demographic back.

Also too, did you know there was an entire website devoted to "a variety of carbonated soft drinks, fruit drinks, and other types of liquid refreshment"? Well, there is!

Soundtrack for Black History Month: Public Enemy

You can't spell EPIC FAIL without the EPL: Middlesbrough

Location: You guessed it, Middlesbrough, North Yorkshire.

Nickname: Boro or the Smoggies. Although, I think this is more of a general nickname for anyone from Middlesbrough.

Stately, Non-Commercial Stadium Name: Riverside Stadium.

Crest: A classic look despite being introduced just a few years ago. The most British thing you can think of: a lion rampant along with plenty of red.

Season So Far: EPIC FAIL. Recently at least. Riding a twelve game winless streak all the way to 19th place. I have to believe they'll somehow duck relegation, though.

General Vibe to a Casual American Fan: Red. A nameless, faceless red. Until this season, they kinda seemed like a top-half team that could sneak up and qualify for Europe every once in a while. Always keep in mind that they were in the final of the UEFA cup in 2006. Also, I'm pretty sure the city of Middlesbrough has a Detroitesque reputation to it in England. So, there's the stench of industrial decay and free-flowing crime all over them.

From the Blurry Collector's Set

Don't touch me I'm a real live wire

Attentive readers will note this song was on that tv show I don't even like anymore but keep hoping it will return to its first season level of quality.

Tuesdays with Ted

This Dream Journal belongs to: Ted
Month of: January

January 2: dreamed about vultures again [note: we had pizza that night]
January 4: eating breakfast with Stephanie
January 9: working, but everyone wore Hawaiian shirts [note: it was casual Friday that day]. This was one of those dreams where I knew I was dreaming, so I left work so I could eat lunch at home and didn't come back!
January 11: eating dinner with Stephanie except it is breakfast for dinner [note: had waffles for dinner night before, which is probably why]
January 12: Stephanie and I were trapped at the elementary school, and all the doors and windows were bricked up like in the Matrix [note: we watched the Matrix that night, so that's probably why]
January 14: went shopping with William and Stephanie, to buy shirts, but everywhere we went was out of shirts
January 15: vultures [no pizza -- first time!]
January 16: William got lost at the library and we never found him [note: we went to the library to get some books on CD]
January 18: made Stephanie dinner, but burnt it [just like real life! lol]
January 19: tried to program automatic lock for the front door, but it messed up and locked us out of the house [note: I locked myself out of the house the weekend before, so that's probably why]
January 23: playing Call of Duty, but Stephanie wanted to play and she was really good and beat me every game
January 25: at work, but instead of regular chair had one of those balance balls you sit on [note: chair at work is broken]
January 27: Forgot to mail electric bill and had to go up to office to pay it [note: I forgot to mail the electric bill and had to go up to the office to pay it, which is probably what this dream was about]
January 28: Stephanie made spaghetti for dinner but for some reason I refused to eat it, and never figured out why
January 31: eating breakfast with Stephanie

Profiles in Being Black: The people outside my apartment right now.

It's 12:30 AM on a Tuesday morning and you're playing rap from your car at high volume and you're running around singing along, poorly. One of two things is happening:
1. You don't realize you're being assholes. This level of self-unawareness is completely foreign to me and seems unlikely.
2. You realize you're being assholes and you don't care. What a bunch of assholes.

You can't spell EPIC FAIL without the EPL: West Bromwich Albion

Location: West Bromwich, near Birmingham in the Black Country.

Nickname: Baggies. I think this is the bird pictured on the crest.

Stately, Non-Commercial Stadium Name: The Hawthorns.

Crest: I like it. Nice bold font. The bird isn't trying to look too tough. There's plants on it so that's nice.

Season So Far: EPIC FAIL. Last place but with almost half of the EPL also sucking, they could actually pull off an escape.

General Vibe to a Casual American Fan: Cute, cuddly. Robert Plant is from West Brom so tight jeans wrapped around man-junk should spring to mind. They seem to pop up in the Premier League every few years, hang around the bottom of the table and then go off to win another 2nd tier title. They actually try to play attractive soccer. The problem is that when you're not as good as the teams you're playing, the easiest way to win is to win ugly.

I wonder what the first viral video was?

Two good possibilities:




They remind me of sitting in my dorm room and realizing for the first time that SongSpy (what a great file-sharing program! the best ever) could download a whole song before I could listen all the way through it.

That poor fish!

Lucky bird, though.

3E Party Flyers

The Date: September 2003

The Flyer:

That says "a desperate, last-ditch effort to curb wes's painkiller addiction."

The Party: Awesome, like they all were. Don't remember anything specific to this party, but it could have been the time we almost threw the coffee table down the stairway. Or the time John, Sarah, Claudia, and I all ended up in my bed. Or the time I printed out lots of copies of Chris Biggs' balls and handed them out. There's just no way to be sure.

Profiles in Being Black: That one guy...

Who? Some black guy.
Where? Ted's apartment at the Summit.
When? 2004, maybe.
What did he do? Tried to sell Charlie and Tha Captain some magazine subscriptions, I think. We were sitting in the stairway outside the apartment drinking beer and waiting for Ted to show up. I'm pretty sure this happened. He was definitely black.

On loneliness, solitude, and technology, two

But those old contacts can also turn into a crutch that prevents students from truly engaging with the new world around them or learning to be alone in their own mind. One of the freshmen McEwen interviewed confessed that every day she spent her lunchtime sitting on the steps outside a campus building, calling or texting her sister. That was less painful for her than sitting alone. Yet like the helicopter parents who hover over their children at the playground in the hopes of shielding them from bumps and bruises, we can delay the hurt only so long. As the Talmud tells us, sometimes a little bit of pain can be a blessing.

[...]

More than anything, McEwen found in her University of Toronto study that college students are constantly connected to the point of having no concept of a truly unplugged life. There's a time-honored tradition in Canada of "going to the cottage," usually in the summertime, and being blissfully disconnected from the rest of the world. "The participants in my study had real discomfort going to the cottage," McEwen says. "If there's no cellphone reception, no Internet access, they think, 'What the hell am I doing out there?' "

It's hard to imagine a Henry David Thoreau emerging from this millennial generation, someone motivated to log two years and two months alone in the woods around Walden and wax about how he "never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude." He'd have no time to observe the bullfrogs or water his bean plants. He'd be too busy searching for a Wi-Fi signal.

The End of Alone

On loneliness, solitude, and technology, one

So we live exclusively in relation to others, and what disappears from our lives is solitude. Technology is taking away our privacy and our concentration, but it is also taking away our ability to be alone. Though I shouldn't say taking away. We are doing this to ourselves; we are discarding these riches as fast as we can. I was told by one of her older relatives that a teenager I know had sent 3,000 text messages one recent month. That's 100 a day, or about one every 10 waking minutes, morning, noon, and night, weekdays and weekends, class time, lunch time, homework time, and toothbrushing time. So on average, she's never alone for more than 10 minutes at once. Which means, she's never alone.

I once asked my students about the place that solitude has in their lives. One of them admitted that she finds the prospect of being alone so unsettling that she'll sit with a friend even when she has a paper to write. Another said, why would anyone want to be alone?

To that remarkable question, history offers a number of answers. Man may be a social animal, but solitude has traditionally been a societal value. In particular, the act of being alone has been understood as an essential dimension of religious experience, albeit one restricted to a self-selected few. Through the solitude of rare spirits, the collective renews its relationship with divinity. The prophet and the hermit, the sadhu and the yogi, pursue their vision quests, invite their trances, in desert or forest or cave. For the still, small voice speaks only in silence. Social life is a bustle of petty concerns, a jostle of quotidian interests, and religious institutions are no exception. You cannot hear God when people are chattering at you, and the divine word, their pretensions notwithstanding, demurs at descending on the monarch and the priest. Communal experience is the human norm, but the solitary encounter with God is the egregious act that refreshes that norm. (Egregious, for no man is a prophet in his own land. Tiresias was reviled before he was vindicated, Teresa interrogated before she was canonized.) Religious solitude is a kind of self-correcting social mechanism, a way of burning out the underbrush of moral habit and spiritual custom. The seer returns with new tablets or new dances, his face bright with the old truth.

The End of Solitude

From the Blurry Collector's Set

Michael Phelps

Whether or not you think marijuana should be illegal, or he should lose his endorsement deals, this whole Michael Phelps thing is getting pretty silly. To wit:

The Michael Phelps investigation intensified Saturday morning with armed deputies raiding a Lake Murray home, then proceeding to a Five Points-area party house where the Olympic champion was pictured in November holding a marijuana pipe, lawyers involved in the case say.

Before the day was over, seven people were charged with misdemeanor marijuana charges.

Three people were charged with simple marijuana possession after a small amount was seized in the raid at the home in a lakefront neighborhood. Four others were charged with simple marijuana possession in the second raid, longtime Columbia attorneys Dick Harpootlian and Joe McCulloch told The State on Thursday.

“He’s sitting there on Saturday, and 12 cops kick in the door with guns drawn, search the house, and find 5, maybe 6 grams of pot,” Harpootlian said about his client, who was arrested in the first raid at the Wells Point Drive home near Ballentine.

“They never asked him, ‘Who sold you the pot?’” Harpootlian continued. “They were asking, ‘Were you at the party with Michael Phelps? Did you see him using marijuana?’ It was all about Michael Phelps.”

That's absurd, but not as absurd as that attorney's name: Dick Harpootlian. Just say it out loud. There's no way that's real.

Receipt checkers

On my trips to Wal-Mart I always secretly hope they will try to stop me because I usually don't show my ticket, as in this story, just so I can freak out on them and yell about unlawful detainment, lawsuits, etc etc. But the employees at the local big box are usually pretty lackadaisical about it. That's probably for the best, as I would not want to get banned from the closest one, but it still leaves me itching sometimes.

friday.

3E Presents: Catchphrase Friday

You want to be the coolest cat on the block? You've got to have a catchphrase! With the weekend coming up, 3E is here to help. Every time you leave a room, just say

"Up yours, bitch! I gotta be at the gas station in twenty!"

Be the coolest guy around this Friday, 'cause it's Catchphrase Friday.

Garage Days Revisited: 03/01/2004

Submitted Title: “5 Things Version 2.1 Beta.” There’s a new sheriff in town: Peter Donahue. The publications board decides to get serious about the paper. My days are numbered.

1. This isn’t going to take long.

I don’t remember why this article is more than 200 words shorter than most of the other ones.
2. Does anyone else think that “Bye Bye Berte” sounds a little too celebratory?

Yes, I realized then and I realize now that it was a pun.

3. I don’t care that a breast was exposed to 90 million people. I don’t care that Nelly was grabbing himself onstage. I don’t care that Kid Rock wore an American flag like a poncho. I care that the performers didn’t even make an effort to make it look like they weren’t lip-synching. I care that my attention span is assumed to be about twenty seconds or the amount of time it took for the show to prematurely eschew one song that you might remember as being mildly popular three years ago in favor of another. I care that the people who produced this pop-culture train wreck felt like the worst parts of the last ten years of music should be thrown into a blender and dumped in Reliant Stadium. I care that this was nothing more than a publicity stunt pandering to the lowest common denominator. I care that it obviously worked since I’m still writing about it a month later.

Gift horse’s mouth: looked in. Now that was a halftime show. They network types are sooooo scared now that we get Paul McCartney, Tom Petty, and Bruce Springsteen.

4. It was recently uncovered that for the last several years Colorado University football recruits have been enticed by alcohol-fueled sex parties. This has led to investigations and the head football coach being put on, most likely, permanent leave. Upcoming sanctions and uncertainty about coaching stability will negatively affect future recruiting. However, nothing will hurt the school’s prospects of landing top players worse than a cutback in the greatest of all recruiting tools, the alcohol-fueled sex party.

Good one, man. Believe it or not, Auburn didn’t throw me a single alcohol-fueled sex party to get me to come to grad school.

5. I wish someone would tell me whether or not I’m pro-choice.

…because I can’t choose for myself. I’m a tool.

In other news

A response to JJ re: Obama

At our most recent 3E get together, the Bot seemed surprised I didn't support and was not excited about Barack Obama. Besides the horrible-bad-not-very-good bailout (and the associated fearmongering and debate-limiting rhetoric), here are some other reasons via a series of links. Note the theme: they are all about civil liberties and transparency, areas I thought Obama would be an improvement over the previous administration.

"Obama backs off reversal on state secrets"

"Bid to reveal 'torture' evidence"

"Solicitor general nominee says 'enemy combatants' can be held without trial"

5-day rule? Obama's quick turnaround

Medical marijuana raids: 1 2

3E Party Flyers

The Date: September 6th, 2002
The Flyer:

The Party: AWESOME. If your god doesn't throw parties like this, then your god sucks. Patrick Hall was there! Brooxie was there! Also, some other people were there. Man, it was great. The message was clear: 3E was here to stay and from now on you had two options: party with 3E or fart around like a little wuss.

Black History Month II

A blast from the recent past:

comics I like

pictures for sad children

The answer to yesterday's brain teaser

A nickel and a quarter. (See how that works? Only one was not a quarter.)

This is how I feel about most consumer electronics

The Onion

Profiles in Being Black: Angelo

Noteoworthy for many reasons:
1. Is black.
2. Lived with Scott McClellan.
3. Played StarCraft all night.
4. Was in my French class. Of the dozen or so days of the semester I decided to show up, he was there a couple of times.
5. His last name was not "Saxon." Would have been funny, though.
6. Andrew Connell once told him he looked like one of The Fugees. Which one is anybody's guess.

I never get tired of this

Black History Month

We've been woefully delinquent in celebrating Black History Month, so this will help catch us back up.

SICK.

THA CAPTAIN NEED HIS MED-SIN!

Note: 3E approves.

Buy me this

RC Flying Cockroach

We offer very popular, authentic USB sushi drives for people who don't conveniently live in Tokyo, and we offer this product for people who don't live in New York.

The remote control also acts as a docking station, allowing you to charge the insect. A 30 minute charge yields five minutes of flying.

Specifications: 5.7x3.4x3.5 inches (145 x 87 x 90mm), requires 6 AA batteries.

Note: this product ships direct from Japan and is intended for the Japanese market. Instruction manuals are in Japanese. However, operation is simple and straightforward and we are available to answer any questions.

Here

Patterson v. Alabama

Patterson's case raised issues of technical legal violations taking precedence over what the High Court considered a miscarriage of justice. The Supreme Court essentially claimed that it could intervene in a situation with no obvious legal question but which still involved injustice. In this case, the court would not allow paperwork requirements to put a person's life at risk and violate constitutional rights. Patterson had appealed his conviction on the same basis as Norris, but the state of Alabama argued that the U.S. Supreme Court had no jurisdiction because Patterson failed to raise his claim in a timely manner and file a new-trial motion before the expiration of the state court's term. Because the bill of exception had been stricken by the Alabama Supreme Court, technically Patterson had never appealed and had not exhausted all remedies at the state level.

The U.S. Supreme Court took the unusual step of remanding the case back to the Alabama Supreme Court, asserting that the Alabama judges would not have upheld Patterson's conviction if they had known the outcome of Norris. The federal question over jury makeup that was raised in Patterson was exactly the same one that the Supreme Court had decided in Norris, and both cases deserved an equal amount of scrutiny, regardless of procedural niceties. Chief Justice Hughes, writing for the majority, claimed that the court could not only address errors in legal judgment, but also see that justice was met. Implied in the ruling was the threat that, if the Alabama high court failed to overturn the verdict, the Supreme Court would review it again in the interest of justice. The Alabama Supreme Court reversed the guilty verdicts.

Along with Norris, the Patterson case showed that although the change would be halting and often only a token effort, the South could not return to a system that used all-white juries and expect the federal courts to uphold their decisions. The constitutional prohibition on racial discrimination before the law was on its way to being consistently and strongly enforced. Although this was an important precedent, the overall outcome was not as positive for Haywood Patterson. He was tried a fourth time and again found guilty. In something of a victory, given the circumstances, Patterson managed to avoid the death penalty in 1936 and was sentenced to 75 years in prison. Trapped in one of the worst prison systems in the country with little possibility of parole, he escaped in 1948. Patterson made his way to Michigan, where the governor refused to sign extradition papers to return him to Alabama. Suffering from cancer and in prison on charges of manslaughter, he died in 1952.

Patterson v. Alabama

3E approves

On Michael Phelps

Remember this?

A true classic.

Stimulus

There's only one way to end this economic crisis.

MONORAIL!!!

Well, sir, there's nothing on earth like a genuine, bona fide, electrified, six-car monorail! What'd I say?

"Monorail!"

What's it called?

"Monorail!"

That's right! Monorail! I swear it's Springfield's only choice. Throw up your hands and raise your voice!

"Monorail!"

What's it called?

"Monorail!"

Once again!

"Monorail! Monorail! Monorail! Monorail!"

Monorail!

Emoticon

Abraham Lincoln: is there anything he can't do (besides survive head shots)?

Here.

Today's forecast

Garage Days Revisited: 10/29/2003

Originally submitted as “Dumb Title.”

1. So much for visual aids. After last issue’s picture debacle where the only two pictures I sent in were matched with the wrong articles, I’ve given up on trying to put anything nice to look at in my section. From now on, I’m just going to request that the campus directory picture for each writer be put next to his or her respective article. I think this will be beneficial to the reader as well as being pretty much inoffensive. Hopefully, this will be a compromise we all can live with.

Looks like my pix got NEUMANNED. I wouldn’t have been such a passive-aggressive dick if things like that didn’t happen every single issue.

2. [scene missing]

Nine Inch Nails reference? I'm so goth-dustrial.

3. There’s a sign in the cellar that reads: “Tipping is not a city in China.” As far as I know, this is right, but it got me thinking pedantically as usual. Certainly there are a great many incorporated townships in the great red bastion of China. “Tipping” certainly sounds Chinese and it seemed perfectly likely that somewhere there would be a place in China named Tipping. Then however, it was pointed out that most Chinese neighborhoods in America share the name “Chinatown.” Perhaps the Chinese aren’t so multitudinous in their geographical nomenclature after all. Touché, cellar.

Casual, subtle racism. It’s what I’m about.

4. In the far-reaching search for BSC’s next Commander-In-Chief, I think that the very serious issue of BSC not sponsoring football needs to be addressed. If I were running this search, the first question that I would ask any would-be successor to Dr. Berte would be: “We need a football team, can you make it happen?” The fact that we’re a smaller college is a non-issue; Huntingdon College, in Montgomery, which recently picked-up football as a varsity sport has an enrollment of 577, about a third of BSC’s. Of course, Huntingdon is Division III, we would be competing at the Division I-AA level with a majority of schools that vastly outnumber us. Problem? Not for Wofford College of Spartanburg, South Carolina, whose Fighting Terriers football team is, at this writing, ranked fifth in the latest Division I-AA poll with a 7 – 1 record and an enrollment of only 1133. Would a fledgling program like BSC be squeezed out by the mammoth programs at the state universities? I believe that there is a sufficient market to sustain a Panther football team. Currently, Alabama has one college football team for (approximately) every 318,000 people. This ranks us 29th in the United States, far behind such gridiron netherworlds as North and South Dakota, Montana, West Virginia, and Iowa. Sadly, the people running our presidential search don’t share my priorities and its not likely that BSC will throw its helmet in the ring of national college football for a long time.

Prophetic. NOT! Also too, my poorly worded influence and arbitrary statistics have hit home statewide. In addition to BSC, Concordia College in Selma and Faulkner University in Montgomery have added football programs in the last five years.

5. If current trends continue and this paper comes out in mid-March, I’d like to wish everyone a fun and task-oriented Spring Break.

This makes me laugh. I’ll spoil the surprise. The next issue actually came out on March 1st. The paper sucked so much. We couldn't even get a special Black History Month edition out. Evan Milligan was so disappointed.

I like the Ex-Fornicator one too

Get yours here.

I'd be interested to know, for the more ridiculous ones like above, what the proportions are for those being worn sincerely and those being worn ironically.

Profiles in Being Black: Evan Milligan

Name: Evan Milligan


Black: Yes


Dreads: Yes


Other stuff we know about him: Virtually nothing. I think he might have gone to chapel. That picture looks like it's in the chapel. Also, he seems to support something called "Phat Farm."


So, here's to you Evan Milligan. You were black yet non-threatening to the lilywhites at BSC.

Le Wrath di Khan

Foolproof

The Mystery Method is a method of seduction first popularized by Erik Von Markovik a.k.a "Mystery" and a team of approximately 15 professional Mystery Method instructors. Mystery Method Corporation also published the book The Mystery Method: How To Get Beautiful Women Into Bed in 2006. The system was initially outlined in posts on the newsgroup alt.seduction.fast. Since December 2006, Mystery is no longer part of the Mystery Method website, although Mystery Method has continued to grow and expand without him.

[...]

An indicator of interest is seduction community jargon for either verbal and nonverbal communications between two people that conveys (usually sexual) interest. [7] The term was coined by Mystery, and is often abbreviated "IOI." Sinn, a former lead instructor for The Mystery Method Corporation (stated in an interview that in all social communications between men and women, "[everything is] either a demonstration of higher value, a demonstration of lower value, an indicator of interest, or an indicator of disinterest."

Wikipedia