....

Congratulations are in order for our great friend Kevin, who played in his first competitive Scrabble tournament over the weekend. He won his division, going 14-1 and had a cumulative point spread of something like +1600.
Misfortunately, I couldn't play, as a hockey game interfered with it. You know how I won't let anything stand in my way when it comes to my hockey games. Only once since I've been a season ticket holder have I missed a game.

The one game I missed was to attend the funeral of a dear friend who passed away two years ago today. Obviously, that's way more important than any hockey game, so it was a no-brainer decision. I've been struggling with whether I should write something about this, but it's heavy on my mind right now, and well, the point of this thing is to get stuff off my mind. Forgive my sloppy attempt at a tribute.

I can't possibly say anything in the memory of Erin that could do her justice. I only had the privilege of knowing her for a few short years, and I was only beginning to know her well. She was a beautiful woman who made a lasting impact on every person she touched.

Please take the time to visit the above link and read the eulogy that Kevin beautifully delivered at her funeral.

there's a chance that things could get weird, yeah that's a possibility

I don't know what to think of this.

On Monday, this blog had 840 pageloads. Of those, roughly 813 of them came from one single visitor. In New York City. Whose ISP is Yipes Communications, Inc. Who uses Internet Explorer version 5.5 as their browser, Windows 2000 as their OS and had Javascript disabled. I know the IP address, but I'm withholding it. This person refreshed the main page once every 21 seconds for a very long time.
I figure this is either (a) a robot who was foiled by the robot insurance (aka comment protection) (2) an extremely obsessed fan waiting for a new post, or (III) a deranged lunatic. I don't have any ideas.
On Wednesday, that same IP address clocked in two times.

What on earth do you want from me?

you kiss like a rock but you know i need it anyway

Do you like chess? Sure you do. What about boxing? Yeah, sure, why not. How 'bout mixing the two? this has to be the most fucked up thing I've seen in a very long time. Talk about a niche sport! I read about it in Sports Illustrated, to which I got a free subscription as part of a promotion (and subsequently forgot to cancel). I normally don't care that much about SI, but once in a while there's something good in there. Maybe even a picture of Biba Golic, who is known as "the Anna Kournikova of ping-pong".
Anyway, the chess boxing is for real. And people go nuts over it. This clip of a chessboxing event proves even further that Germans are weird. My favorite bit is the heartrate monitors on the contestants.

now playing:

Cocteau Twins Blue Bell Knoll

zurich is stained and it's not my fault

Allow me to toot my own horn for a second.

I am loved.

At least in Canada and the Russian Federation. And Slovakia. And certain parts of the United States. And by one lone person in Latvia.

One of my nuggets of genius over at the hockey place, concerning really bad hockey jerseys, was recently the subject of much talk. I was featured in the 11th Carnival of the NHL, hosted by the brilliant Jes Gölbez. I was also linked in some sort of online edition of the Toronto Star. Since then, my pageload numbers have skyrocketed. I typically average about 35 pageloads a day over there, but the last four days have been 118, 85, 285(!!) and 101. The Carnival, to which I submitted the article, helped a lot. I never could have imagined the explosion I got the next day when the Star found me and referenced my blog.

Unfortunately, I haven't been offered any MOWs or any book deals or any multi-million dollar product endorsement deals, but I'll take the attention while I can get it.

Now if there was only a way to get the newspapers to start talking about THIS blog, I'd be really happy.

now (still)playing:

Stereolab Dots and Loops

I am not one half of the problem

Here's to hoping that folks have the sense to google something, get a result that seems too bizarre to be true, and do the research to find out it ain't true.

OR

Isn't it funny how unreliable the "information" in the internets can be?

Per our discussion about the inappropriateness of dating a girl in her teens, I got to thinking about that song from 1981 by Benny Mardones. The one about statutory rape. You know the one. "Into the night"

She's just sixteen years old
Leave her alone, they say.
Separated by fools
Who don't know what love is yet
But I want you to know

If I could fly
I'd pick you up
I'd take you into the night
And show you love
Like you've never seen
Ever seen

I had to google the song to get the lyrics just right, and there were a couple of places who have a very important piece of information dead wrong. On two levels. These are only four of "about 50" sites that list the author of that song as "Paul Harrison, Larry Mullern, Adam Clayton and Dave Evans". You might glance at that list of names, and if you know your rock music trivia, you might say as I did:

WHAT THE FUCK?!?!?!


Those names are strikingly similar to those of the members of U2.
However, there are two things wrong here:

1. Someone is maliciously trying, for some reason, to get us to think that U2 wrote this song. They didn't. The song was written by Mardones and his buddy and frequent collaborator Robert Tepper.


2. Whoever started this rumor and got people to believe it got the names wrong in the first place. Those names would be Paul "Bono" Hewson, Larry Mullen, Jr., Adam Clayton, and David "The Edge" Evans.

Who knows why some evil demon started this rumor and got the publishers of 50 some websites to believe it?

That just goes to show you....

now playing:

Stereolab Dots and Loops

I was shipwrecked with this frog who was endlessly testing my faith

I went back to the open mic night thing last night. This time, sans friends. My reason for going there was simple: I was in search of a woman who I talked to last time. Sadly, she wasn't there.

However, I did get approached, and I wouldn't exactly say hit on, but approached by a girl who is about half my age. Okay... probably not half, but I would say considerably younger than the Hales Law¹ lower limit of 24. A cute girl who plays at the open mic thing, and plays some really cool stuff. On paper,irresistiblee. However, too too young for me. This week, she played a Pavement song, a Belly song ("Untogether") and the same Michael Penn song ("No Myth") that she played three weeks ago. A couple of weeks ago, I thought that it would be fitting if she did a Camera Obscura song, so I asked her about that, and she didn't know them. I strongly encouraged her to give them a listen, but I don't think she'll remember.

That out of the way, I wanna talk about some observations from last night and the previous three weeks at open mic.

I saw a couple of guys up there two weeks ago. One was playing the guitar, and the other was air guitaring. I found it to be both comical and, in a strange way, really inappropriate. What do you think?

One guy answered his cellphone while he was on "stage". I know it's really informal and all that, but that's pretty lame.

Lots of people use cheat sheets for the lyrics. At first I thought it was cheesy, but I guess it isn't that bad. It is, after all, informal.

I thought I had some other observations, but that's it. That's all.

Now playing:

Small Factory For If You Cannot Fly
¹ The Hales Law of Minimum Age for Dating Consideration dictates that the threshold of appropriateness for a man dating a younger woman is that she be half his age plus seven years. Minimum. In my case, the minimum appropriate age would be 24. I think that might be a little too young, but the Hales law deems it to be appropriate.

your favorite colour is that of red wine, which brings me around to your favorite pastime.

After getting a big kick out of the Sidearm Delivery band name project, I decided to play along while I was at my internetless work.

I came up with a few, and I'd like to encourage all of you to submit your own, or maybe to play along by doing this on your own blog.

• Archers of Meatloaf
  
• Belle, Biv, DEVO & Sebastian (a three band combo!)
  
• Katrina and the Rogue Waves
  
• Bow Wow Wowhaus
  
• Sleater-Kenny Chesney
  or
  
• Sleater-Kevn Kinney
  
• The Slant 6ths
  
• Velocity Girls against Boyracer (a three band-combo)
  
• G Love and .38 Special Sauce
  
• Innocence Mission of Burma
  
• Ecolyn & the Bunnymen
  
• L7 and the Ragged Tigertrap(this one is kind of cheating, since I'm joining a band to an album title to another band)
  
• Dub Narcotic Sound System of a Down
  
• Air Miami Sound Machine
  
• Aztec Camera Obscura


• The Shipping New(s) Pornographers

Whattaya got?

now playing:

The Decemberists Picaresque

should have been a west coast bride

I'd like to encourage everyone to stop by Sidearm Delivery today for Dave's exercise in combining band names to come up with funny stuff. Remember Malmsteen Can Dance? Four Non-Malmsteens? It's like that.

It is also my suspicion that Reid from areseven has ghostwritten Kevin's latest post at Southpaw Grammar.

now playing:

Bettie Serveert Attagirl

one of us is a cigar stand and one of us is a lovely blue incandescent guillotine

I'm still alive.

I should report, first of all, that the sports gods came through on the second part of my birthday wish, giving me a 3-2 shootout victory by my Canes over the Pittsburgh Penguins. Both the football game and the hockey game had positive endings, but both had a little more tension than I would have hoped for.

There is lots of stuff that I should be commenting about. From a horrible traffic accident on the interstate last week (one that I was not involved in) to the idea of singularity, to the state of things at work, to music, to talking to a really cute girl at a bar, to my latest Netflix rentals, to the changing face of over-the-counter medication as we know it.

I'm just not really on the ball so much.

More on all of these topics later. Probably in reverse order. I have to get ready for tonight's hockey game.

now playing:

Innocence Mission Glow

he knows how many freckles she's got, she scratches his beard

Part one of my sports/birthday request came true. I could have lived without the tension of the furious comeback by Favre and Co./massive collapse by Carolina, but the end result was good, so I can't complain.

The day itself was kind of strange.
I stopped by work to check on something before I left town, and I had a couple of beers. Good times. Then I went to the record store and picked up the new records by Death Cab and Echo & The Bunnymen. Good stuff. I really like the new Death Cab, and I gave the Echo & The Bunnymen record only one half-assed listen, so I can't really say, but I liked it.

I listened to both as I made the drive from Greensboro to Charlotte. As is par for the course, I hit some really heavy traffic about half way there. Stand-still interstate traffic for a little while. After one of the times that we got to move a couple of feet, I didn't stop as quickly as the car in front of me, and I literally tapped her bumper. Lady got out and looked at it, and didn't appear to be all that concerned, as there wasn't any damage, but she insisted that we exchange contact information and insurance information. Nothing will come of it, and like I said, there was no damage, but it wasn't a fun thing.

When I got to my folks house, we kind of sat around for a while, and they had a cookout planned for the entire condo association, so we did that. Big fun (not really).

Later, but before the game, I got a call from a friend I haven't really talked to in ten years, but who has been calling me a lot lately. She didn't know it was my birthday, so it was sort of lucky. It's really strange, reconnecting after so much time.

The game seemed like it was going to be a blowout, but suddenly took a turn as Brett Favre showed us why he's so damn good. It came down to the nail-biting end.

Now, I just need the other part of my sports/birthday wish to come true. Although the NHL season starts tonight with all teams in action, our home opener is the one I'm talking about. I'm so incredibly excited about going to hockey games again after an 18 month layoff.

I've got the DVR fired up to record the Canes game tonight and also the OLN game, which I think is the Flyers and Rangers. I'll be working tonight, but as soon as I get home, I'll watch the Canes game. I'll also be interested in seeing OLN's coverage. Although there's plenty of doubting Thomases about the NHL going to OLN, I think it's great. I wrote about this at the other place, but the nutshell is that Comcast and OLN are owned by the same guy who co-owns the Flyers. So he knows hockey and he wants to make sure it gets terrific treatment. It was not getting it from ESPN. Down the road, he wants to make an NHL Network for broadcast in the United States. Canada already has such a thing, and it would go a long way in the promotion of the sport in the United States. 24 hour hockey programming? I love it!

That's it for today. I have to go to the other place.

now playing:

Kristin Hersh The Grotto

there's something wrong with my toast

After work last night, I went to that birthday party. I wasn't quite sure what to expect, but it was kinda cool. Dr. A's girlfriend had already been drinking for a few hours by the time we got there, so she was pretty hammered. So was the (sort of) Birthday Girl. Her real birthday isn't until Friday, but she got the party a week early. Anyway, DA's old lady kept trying to introduce me to people that I already know. And she knows that I know them. It was kinda funny.

To end the suspense, there was no "making out". The birthday girl was really hammered and REALLY horny. She was being quite direct about what she thought she wanted. Thankfully, all of the guys there had the decency to leave it alone. If she had been sober and demanding that one of us lay her, that would be a different story. She ended up passing out pretty early. As a side note, one of the funniest things I've heard in a while was said to the birthday girl about me:

David is my favorite neighbor, and he'll totally fuck you.

Of course I didn't. It was quite an adventure, though.

That other girl, the one Bridgett wants me to hook up with ... um, no. First of all, I don't like being "set up", and I just don't have any interest in her. I'm sure she's nice, but I don't really want to pursue her or anyone right now. I'm perfectly happy to have a silly harmless crush on a lesbian.

Fortunately, the birthday girl has no recollection of the parts about last night that might have caused embarrassment or uneasiness.

Now, moving on to my own birthday...

Since I don't get to spend it with a hot girl or any fantastic friends (unless you think my mom is hot and my parents are fantastic friends), I'll be asking for two things. I'll ask the sports gods to give me two things:

1. A Carolina Panthers victory over the Green Bay Packers on my own birthday, with me in attendance


2. A Carolina Hurricanes victory (in their home opener) over the Pittsburgh Penguins on October 7 as a belated birthday for me, and on the actual birthdays of Eleanor, and of the aforementioned drunken lesbian birthday girl. The drunken lesbian doesn't care, but Eleanor does.

Don't look for me as you watch Monday Night Football. You won't see me unless they send a cameraman into the nosebleeds. You have a very good chance, though, of seeing me on TV at the Canes game, provided you live in the Hurricanes TV market.

now playing:

Brita Phillips & Dean Wareham L'Avventura