Form of an ice satellite dish

DID YOU KNOW? Mariah Carey recently made a music video with Kenneth the Page from 30 Rock.

I mean, in some ways, I do want to have a tumblelog like Kamber, but I don't, because then I'd have five blogs. So let me just pretend my blog is Kamber's blog and I'll tell you some tumblr-style observations about my day.

How unlikely is it, do you think, to have two gay Vietnamese friends who both want to go shopping at Crossroads Trading Company at the exact same time?

"Thanks for coming shopping with me, Sam!"
"Oh, no problem."
"Aren't you going to buy anything for yourself?"
"No, no, I went shopping last week and spent a lot."
"So did I! This week is a different week."

Mitra, Jeremy and I went to Cesar, a tapas restaurant founded by Stephen Singer, the ex-husband of Chez Panisse founder and all-around fresh food guru Alice Waters. The food was fantastic, and the garnish of Jeremy's gift certificate only made it even sweeter, but I did notice that they used frozen peas instead of fresh peas in their paella. Seriously, now I can tell why Stephen and Alice had to break up.

Is dyslexia hereditary? At lunch, we were wondering if it ran in Brett Favre's family.

Did you hear they just found out diarrhea is hereditary? It runs in your genes.

Thanks, I'll be here all night.

I still might do a whole entry on biking in Berkeley at some point, but for the time being let me just say that biking down College Avenue is way faster than driving down it; nevertheless I need to stop cutting off buses in traffic.

I wish English were German so there would be a word like "theredown" that I could have used in the previous sentence.

Speaking of public transportation, one time, I think it was when we were in his room listening to the Lutoslawski cello concerto, that Colin asked me whether I only like ugly music because it makes me feel different from everybody else. I also like riding backwards on the BART, and three separate groups of people on the BART last night said, "Oh, let's sit here, it's facing forward," which makes me wonder if I just like riding backwards to feel different too, or if there's some deeper psychological and philosophical stuff going on there.

I know I have that other blog to tell you such things, but this is possibly the greatest song of all time.

WARNING: Once you click on that link, you will not be able to stop the groove. Ever.

The book of recurrent dreams

DID YOU KNOW? Today, or maybe Monday, I'm not too sure really, is César Chávez Day in eight states, one of those states being California. The holiday is intended to "promote service to the community in honor of Chávez's life and work."

I think it's actually supposed to be on Monday, but what do I know? I'm a recent transplant into California, and Professor Radke didn't come into work today, so I'm guessing that today is the holiday. All of this makes me wonder why I'm in lab today, if my professor isn't even here. Probably to honor César Chávez and his life and work.

One problem I've been having since getting to college is having dreams that fulfill wishes that are immediately relevant to my life, and I'm not just talking about dreams like the one where I went to Washington, DC and went on a date with Daniel Vosovic from Project Runway 2, and we had just gotten back to his apartment and we were sitting on his couch talking when Gabe knocked on my door and woke me up, just so he could give me my 6.002 p-set, which I had left in the kitchen. I mean, as good of a dream as that was, it wasn't really immediately relevant to my life.

The best example I have is when I had forgotten to turn in a small piece of administrative paperwork for 10.28, and I was really worried about it, wondering whether I was going to have a chance to turn it in or not, because it was the day before Thanksgiving break, and I stressed out, and I e-mailed the TA to whom I was supposed to submit it right before I went to sleep, and that night I had the most wonderful dream where I went down into the basement of Building 66 and talked to the TA, and she was all, "Oh, honey! Don't worry about it! Just turn it later! Have a wonderful Thanksgiving! You are amazing!" And then I woke up and figured out, after some debate, that I did actually have to turn in my papers in the basement of Building 66.

Yeah, that was way better than the Daniel Vosovic dream.

So, like every single other grad student I know, I applied for an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship this year, something like, oh... five months ago, and like every other grad student I know, I check the website something like three or four times a day to see if they've posted the list of recipients yet. ChemE grad students at Berkeley are getting a raise next year, so I try to rationalize it to myself, all, "Oh, it's only a $3000 raise, it's not that much, I don't really want it that badly," but honestly, there's no way I can make myself fail to be excited about the prospect of getting paid an extra $250 per month for the next 36 months.

I want to cry on the rare occasions when I'm inspired to visit College Confidential, because seriously, something that introduces that much stress into high school students' lives should just not exist. At the same time, if there were an NSF Confidential, I would totally be on there every day, wondering all, "1450 GRE. MIT undergrad. Top xx% of class. 3.5 years of research experience. No publications, but I have other assets, like I was social chair for TBP and I'm good at singing. What are my chances?" If there were a grfpblogs.nsf.gov I would be on there every day, commenting "FIRST POST! [Ben Jones' NSF analog] is my favorite! I wrote this equation about how awesome he is! Also I facebook stalked him and I'm now friends with his wife and dog."

And how do I know this? Because seriously, I've been having the worst wish-fulfillment dreams lately. Not like Daniel Vosovic coming down from the clouds and giving me $9000 over the next three years, but more like two nights ago, when I was on a hike and NSF decisions came out, and I was really excited to see if I had won anything, and so I went to the website and found out that all my friends had won but I hadn't. I was really curious just to see why, so I asked someone on the hike, who was on the committee, and he showed me my paperwork, and they were all, "Oh, your application was the funniest application ever! We have one of them every year, and we were worried that we wouldn't find it this year, but then we got to yours, and it was so bad that it was unbelievable. Seriously, it's amazing that someone with qualifications as low as yours could be such a massive jerk. We actually had seven different people comment on your application just because it was so funny. This one drew a caricature of you! Ha, look at your massive head and ugly teeth." I was kind of crushed. But then I woke up from that dream inside of another dream, and it turned out that I was actually in the navy. I guess that's an improvement? I'm not too sure, really.

So I was totally unsettled by that when I woke up, but halfway into my bananas and all-bran cereal (seriously, it keeps you regular) I convinced myself that no, it was all just a dream, I didn't actually have the most hilarious NSF application of all time. I mean, maybe I did, but there's no way to be sure right now. Then last night I had the most wonderful dream where everyone I know actually did get NSF, and my name was seventh on the list, because, I don't know, I guess it was indexed by middle name or something. Then I wasn't wearing a shirt, and used my newfound wealth to buy a unicycle. Which I presumably rode on top of a umbrella later in that chronology, although my alarm clock woke me up before I got to that part.

So seriously, this needs to come out soon, or I'm not going to wake up alternately terrified or disappointed every single morning, until the point that I'm not going to be able to get any sleep at all anymore, ever again. Insomnia plague. Anyway, I do believe in dreams being somewhat prophetic, so I think the moral of the story is that if I want to get an NSF fellowship, I need to buy a unicycle. And avoid hiking. Confirmed.

Live free or diet hard

DID YOU KNOW? According to Wikipedia, quoting a print issue of Mojo magazine, Keith Richards actually snorted his father's ashes like cocaine, not with cocaine.

This was a big news story of 2007, I guess. First he told some Korean newspaper that he did, then he said no, it was a joke, then he said it was mistranslated, then he said that he doesn't even do cocaine because he's like 65 and he would die. And now he says he actually did snort his father's ashes, but not with cocaine mixed into it. It's all very confusing. All I know is that the Boston Metro had the best headline ever to go along with their article on the subject.

Snort Me Up

Making a much graver mistake than they realize, today Yelp invited me to become part of their Yelp Elite Squad. I'm not sure what that really entails, except that it's now part of my duty to "keep telling [my] friends about Yelp and encourage them to invite their friends as well." Yeah, I guess that's what I'm doing. Apparently I'm supposed to be some kind of Yelp ambassador now. Really, I just use it because I'm in love with the sound of my own voice and can never find enough outlets for it; being called "elite" for no apparent reason is just an added perk.

Despite this, Yelp is not even my favorite Web 2.0 site of the moment. No no, Flickr is awesome. Not so much in terms of its user interface or anything. I mean, I don't know, I've never actually tried using it. But Adam told me that it's actually inferior to facebook as a means of releasing embarrassing photographs to the internet. Or just regular photographs; I kind of only think in terms of embarrassing ones.


But, yeah, Adam told me that Flickr has a less user-friendly interface and a less attractive layout than facebook. And, I mean, since facebook stalking is now a bajillion times harder than it used to be (remember four years ago when you could do advanced search at other universities by changing the school name in the URL?), user friendliness and attractiveness are really all that facebook really has going for it anymore.

Oh man, this almost exactly parallels Ruth's Rule: "Attractive, interesting, stable: choose two." Facebook is kind of not interesting anymore. Oh well, we all knew it wouldn't last.

But I digress. The point is, I actually have no idea about its photo-sharing interface, but one thing Flickr does excel at is throwing AMAZING parties. One fine afternoon my friend Adam gchatted me and was all, "Hey, there's a Flickr party going on in the city on Saturday. Do you want to go?" I was a little worried that they would go and talk in crazy Flickr terms and I'd feel totally left out. Like imagine if you went to a party five years ago and everyone was talking about their mini-feeds and getting all complicated in the coat closet. You wouldn't know what to say. Or imagine you're a gay MIT graduate trying to join a conversation with any group of your male grad student friends during March Madness. Same thing, really.

But Adam assured me that the party wouldn't be too Flickr-related; in fact, his roommate Hung had originally discovered it, and Hung doesn't even use Flickr. Okay, I'm down with that. So after an awesome day in Napa wine tasting with Mitra and company, I headed over to San Francisco to check out the party. I was really kind of half-heartedly inviting people all weekend, "Yo, there's an, um... Flickr party on Saturday. You should totally come." But in my heart of hearts, I was kind of just going to hang with Hung and Adam.

I like how I imply that I said "an, um... Flickr party" like I was planning to say "um..." and then adjusted my grammar accordingly. God, I'm so smart.

Anyway, seriously, I am the worst person ever for not lobbying a bajillion times harder for everyone I knew to come to this party. So the first thing that happened when we walked in the door was that this lady was like, "Oh, hi, here's two tickets" and we were like, "For what?" and she was like, "For drinks!" and I was like PFFFFFFFT and Hung and Adam were probably excited too, but they don't make that noise when they're excited.


And, I mean, that's enough to make me love Flickr forever, but then they had to freaking go and have free t-shirts and free cupcakes too. Seriously, what could possibly be better than free cupcakes to go with free beer? Nothing. Nothing at all. Even the Waffle Party that Kendall and I threw that one time pales in comparison. Actually, that reminds me, my waffle maker is still in lab. I mean, I'm looking at it right now.



As we continued around the party, we also encountered free appetizers, free chocolate, free party hats, free balloons, and Polaroid pictures. Seriously, who doesn't love Polaroid pictures? Even though they're really low quality and small, they have the added value of making you sing Outkast all night after you take one. There's got to be an economic term for that kind of thing. Mitra?


The actual purpose of the Flickr party, I guess, other than distributing free beer and cupcakes, was ostensibly an exhibition of 5,000 collected Flickr photos that they submitted. My favorite was this picture of a bald eagle that I now cannot find even on Flickr. I don't know how to describe it other than this eagle could not have looked more like Stephen Colbert if it were actually the cover of I Am America (And So Can You!). I would spend longer searching for it on Flickr, but considering they have 83 photos of the typo "blad eagle," I don't think I'm going to have much luck.


Adam's favorite was probably this picture of him in Los Angeles, and, you know, I just like taking pictures of people taking pictures. Of pictures. I think I'll submit this when Flickr has their party same time next year.

Anyway, to thank Flickr for their massively awesome party, I just felt like it would be right to do a blog entry on it, like how I always want to go to Yogurt Harmony because they gave me tons of free samples once, even though I don't actually like the yogurt that much. Man, that was the best thing Yogurt Harmony ever did, ever. But, yeah, this entry is basically just a shameless advertisement for Flickr, which you should totally join, especially if you want free beer and cupcakes.

Oh, yeah, and, um, Yelp is awesome too. Join Yelp. Go Yelp Squad.

Spoiling all the paintwork

DID YOU KNOW? Because impersonating a member of the opposite sex was a crime through at least the 1950's, the proprietor of the Black Cat Bar in San Francisco distributed badges proclaiming "I am a boy" to his drag queen patrons.

I don't think there's a topic of conversation more susceptible to incomprehensibility than choosing colors of paint. Adjectives become nouns, adjectives become adverbs, adjectives become other adjectives. I imagine that copywriters for paint companies devise names for new colors with such conversations in mind.

"Dad and I are on our third yellow."
"What?"
"Our third yellow."
"Your third yellow what?"
"Our third yellow can of paint."
"Oh, paint."
"Well, we were going to get daffodil yellow, but it was too dark."
"Okay."
"And then we tried optimistic yellow, but it was too bright."
"Oh, darn. Is there a pessimistic yellow?"
"No. There's a fun yellow."
"Oh man, how could you pass that one up?"
"It's too green."
"Oh."
"So we have a test can of lemony twist."
"What happened to optimistic yellow?"
"It's too light! It's almost white. Dad liked it."

Granted, my dad and I have pretty much the same taste in paint colors, in that we have completely opposite tastes, but everybody else in the world thinks that both of us have terrible taste in paint colors. Sam, Scott, and rest of the world represent the unit vectors of paint selection for the universe.

My old dorm room, a vision in New Orleans and Mango Tango.

Everything old is new again

DID YOU KNOW? Turanga Leela from Futurama was named after Olivier Messaien's most famous orchestral work, the Turangalila Symphony.

Just wanted to follow up on some threads from previous blog entries; give you a Weekend Update, if you will, on some things that's been going on in the past few weeks. Things other than free beer and cupcakes; I promise an entry on that real soon.

Fresh, aka Michael Schuck, has come down from his tree, and this article about it is worth reading, if for nothing else, then for the phrase "sneak ninja raid."

My new crack is chilli-spiced wild mangosteen from Tuk-Tuk Thai and Asian market. Trader Joe's Chevre is still good, but I'm going cold turkey for a while.

Nobody is down with Santa; I submitted it to Threadless and only 6% of all people would wear a Threadless shirt proclaiming that they are, in fact, down with Santa. It'll have to go in the filing cabinet of "things only Sam thinks are funny."

Devotchka tickets were released to Ticketmaster, which means prices went up like $15, which means I'm even less likely to find someone to drop money on it; whatever, they're totally too cool for everyone I know, anyway.

Soul patch is gone.

Brunch with Nghi again today, which was fantastic, as always. This time it was a thai brunch. I keep meaning to take pictures of thai brunch and I always completely forget. But I took some pictures of Nghi and myself on the way home, which prompted this classic Nghi quote, which kind of summarizes this glorious new information age in which we live in, I think

"Ugh, I hate these pictures of me. I look terrible. Can I delete them? Fine, I'll just untag them when you post them on facebook. Please post them on facebook."

Over brunch, I also had the opportunity to do an impression of me picking Woon Teck up at his house for a date. Basically, it consisted of Woon Teck repeatedly calling me fat and ugly, and then chastising me for taking him to an Italian restaurant instead of the Sanrio factory.

Seriously, doing Woon Teck impressions is like shooting fish in a barrel, except that I'm actually afraid of operating a firearm. Then again, I'm afraid of operating Woon Teck, too.

The breath, the ascent

DID YOU KNOW? My beloved high school friend Shana has informed me that according to the TSA, you can carry throwing stars in your checked baggage, but not in your carry-on. Although, in my experience, if you put a banana in your carry-on, the baggage screeners won't notice any other questionable items you have in there, because they'll be all, "Ooh, banana!"

So yesterday was ChemE Keg, and it was awse. It was awse and there were sandwiches. I forgot to eat lunch; actually, I only had a Peanut Butter Crunch Clif Bar, which was delicious, but not really fulfilling, so I was really looking forward to macking on some cupcakes or something at ChemE keg, and then yo, they had sandwiches. Sandwiches on ciabatta. It was like a dream come true. It actually turned out to be extraordinarily dense ciabatta, so you'd just be standing there talking and then you'd take a bite of sandwich and you'd be all "mmmph mmmph mmph" for the next thirty seconds. I actually almost choked twice. But I guess dense carbohydrates are appropriate for an event such as ChemE Keg.

Note to self: I want to make grape walnut focaccia.

But I was at ChemE Keg explaining my Runnin' Rhino shirt to everyone (seriously, I'm a little worried that as a result of Threadless, my wardrobe has become more interesting than I am as a person) and someone was like, "Yo, there's Peking Acrobats." I was like, "Whaaaat?" I thought it would be one of those things that I wouldn't want to go to, like last year they went to Nutrocker or something, and then had an awesome party afterward, so I thought this would kind of be like the same thing, and I'd want to go to the party but not to Nutrocker. But no, actually Peking Acrobats only cost ten dollars, and you know, seriously, I've never seen Peking Acrobats, not even in Epcot. So I was all, "Yeah, whatever, I'll go see the Peking Acrobats." And so, at around 7 PM, ChemE Keg split up into two groups: the group watching Peking Acrobats, and the group watching March Madness.

Seriously, the group watching March Madness missed everything. Everything.

Let me just say, Peking Acrobats is the most amazing thing that happened to me this week, and this week I started a lab fire, unlocked all the characters in Super Smash Bros Brawl, ate Cheeseboard Pizza, and found a pair of Diesel jeans for $16 at Buffalo Exchange. I'm tempted to write a 10,000-googol-word-long essay on how utterly astounded I was, but I'll save my obscenely long blog entries for things like complaining about public transportation in Italy. I'm just gonna tell you the first and last things that happened in the show, and let you imagine everything in between.

So the curtain went up, and there were seven girls on the stage, and each girl was holding between three or four six-foot rods in each hand, and each rod had a plate on the end, and each plate was just a-spinnin' at the end of that rod. The band was playing some relaxing Chinese music, and the girls just walked in circles spinning the plates on their rods for a minute. And seriously, the only word I can use to describe it is "breathless." Like, you're just sitting there in your seat, and there are fifty plates spinning on stage, and you don't even want to take a breath for fear or disturbing the plates, disturbing the universe; you don't even want to look in case a plate drops.

And then this girl comes out onto a massive podium set up on the center of the stage, supports herself on one arm, and does the kind of contortions and gymnastics that you expect from Chinese acrobats. By itself, it'd still be kind of impressive, but it's like she's not even aware that there are 50 plates being spun at the same time, forming a giant circle around her. And then you look down, even though you're kind of afraid, and you notice that now the girls are doing turns, and kneeling, and standing up, and jumping, and DOING FRONT FLIPS, all while keeping their arms perfectly parallel with the ground and spinning six to eight plates in each one. It's hypnotic. It's kind of like Bhangra, how Bhangra stars keep moving their shoulders until you don't notice after a while, except there won't be a massive shattering of porcelain if Bhangra stars stop moving their shoulders for a second. Seriously, I don't even have words that can describe the incredible tranquil elevation I felt sitting there after, so I'm going to have to steal some Pulitzer-Prize-winning words from Tony Kushner.

The parting of the air, the breath, the ascent. GLORY TO--

So then they did a bunch of other stuff, like flipping through hoops, and a girl used her legs to rotate a table around every conceivable degree of freedom, and a guy had more than 30 plates spinning simultaneously at one point, and a dude did a handstand on six stacked chairs, and they had like 15 or 20 people on a bicycle, and it was all really impressive. It was all impressive, but not totally unexpected. I mean, when they bring out six guys and six chairs you kind of expect that at some point the six guys are gonna stack up the six chairs and make a giant tower out of themselves and the chairs, and then they're gonna do handstands. Not that you're not like "WOW!" but the "WOW!" is more "WOW! They did that successfully!" and not "WOW! I can't believe they did that." So while everything in the show was pretty much uniformly outstanding nothing gave me THE SHIVERS until the curtain call.

So after the massive human pagoda, everyone came out for the curtain call. Each person was doing exactly what they had done most impressively in the show. Table tumbler was tumbling a table. Handspring dudes were doing handsprings. Basketball dude was spinning a basketball. You know, whatever. It was cool. I liked it. It was neat to see it all going on at once. But then I looked over to the corner of the stage, and I saw this one dude and lady.

The dude was twirling an umbrella. The lady was riding a unicycle and twirling ribbons. On top of the umbrella. She was riding a unicycle and twirling ribbons on the top of the umbrella. A unicycle. On the umbrella. Riding.



SHE RODE A UNICYCLE ON TOP OF AN UMBRELLA.

I mean, that's worthy of caps lock, right? She was RIDING A UNICYCLE ON TOP OF AN UMBRELLA. There were no unicycles or umbrellas anywhere else in the show. They just decided to bring that out at the end, for the last ten seconds, just because they could. A unicycle on an umbrella. But what was most amazing is that they were just so nonchalant about it. Like, you know, if it were me, I'd be all "Look at me! Look at me!" But no, she didn't care if you were looking at her or at the backflips or the spinning plates or the dragons. You know, whatever. She just wanted to focus on twirling her ribbons.

And, I mean, presumably keeping her balance and making sure that she continued to ride her unicycle at the exact speed the umbrella was rotating at. And wondering if her living will is updated. But mostly, the ribbon twirling.

I SAW SOMEONE RIDE A UNICYCLE ON TOP OF AN UMBRELLA.

In less impressive news, I think I found out that my perfect fried egg is actually a poached egg. I was making this recipe because I picked up some chard at the Farmer's Market this morning, and I decided to try my hand at poaching the egg, just for fun. And yo, you know how I'm always "the perfect fried egg should taste like lava exploding out of a cloud?" That's what a poached egg is. And since it takes me like 5 minutes to fry an egg anyway, because I do it over super low heat in order to approach my lava/cloud idea, it's not really any less convenient to make poached eggs. My world was kind of rocked this morning.

I saw a woman riding a unicycle on an umbrella last night, and yet my world was still rocked by a poached egg. That's how much I like poached eggs.

Tomorrow: pictures! I don't know what they will be pictures of, but there will be pictures.

Why should I care?

DID YOU KNOW? My MITblog is currently the #11 google images hit for "facial hair." This has been brought to my attention by two separate people who would never have any reason to communicate with each other.

So I'm a socialist, in name only, and I'm a famewhore, that's well known, but one thing I'm not is a comment whore, and there's totally a difference between a comment whore and a famewhore. So last night, when I was strongly considering making a blagopoll to see whether I should shave my beard or not, open both to my closest friends and all the people who have been finding pictures of dreadlocked Kendall in a gondola, I ultimately decided not to do a beard post in that form, because that would just be comment whoring.

This post, on the other hand, is famewhoring. I mean, seriously, look at the DID YOU KNOW? already.

Because the beard, yo, it's been bothering me a lot lately; the asymmetry, the dryness, the general scruffiness, the unexpectedly complicated upkeep thereof... basically, I was mad as hell, and I didn't want to take it anymore. On the other hand, I did like looking kind of butch, and getting lots of comments on how old I appeared, and posting facebook pictures of myself with a beard and having all my old friends be all, "Whaaat?" But this morning I decided to just cowboy up and shave it, and ultimately that did turn out to be a way more productive use of my time than studying for my only transport midterm of the semester.

So my original famewhorish intention was to take a series of photographs chronicling my excellent shaving adventure, starting with full beard, ending with clean-shaven, and having soul patch, yes, soul patch, as the penultimate picture. And then post them as a new album on facebook. So I started. I did full beard. I did cleaner full beard. I did amish. I did awesome sideburns. I did muttonchops. I did chops with a soul patch.

I did chops with a soul patch.

And seriously? They were awse. Like, mind-numbingly awse. I kept bringing the razor to my face, but after a little evening out, I couldn't bear to shave another hair.

So I went out in public looking like this today.


I was just gonna go with it for the exam and then shave tomorrow, but the more I live with them, I more I kind of enjoy looking like the werewolf version of myself. And I have kind of a dangerous curiosity about what would happen if I grew them out a little more. Not, like, Hernik Ibsen, but maybe like Rufus Wainwright. Not that I don't admire them equally.

I'd ask you whether I should keep them or not, but, you know, I'm not a comment whore.

Maurer's little helper

DID YOU KNOW? Berkeley chemist Glenn Theodore Seaborg, who discovered plutonium in the building that I work in, gave it the atomic symbol "Pu" instead of "Pl" as a joke. Like, PU, plutonium smells. Oh, those chemists. He also thought about naming it "ultinium" because he was convinced that he had discovered the last element on the periodic table.

So I've got a dangerous new addiction, I'd just like to let you know, and it's Trader Joe's Chevre. That's the only picture of it I could find online, and of course I don't use the Chevre Lite, because I don't believe in the word "light" being spelt that way. But really, it's amazingly delicious, creamy, tangy, polite, thoughtful, my new bicycle, and taught me that chevre is the French word for "goat" simply because of the adorable stylized goat pictured on its label. Now I won't go to a party and be like, "Trader Joe's chevre is delicious, it reminds me of goat cheese." Because that would be a faux pas, which is the French word for "hot tranny mess."

How long before that phrase works its way out of the collective vocabulary of the blogosphere? Seriously, the French Laundry at Home cooking blog I read used it this week.

I first bought Trader Joe's chevre a month ago for a Radke Lab group meeting, where 80% of it was completely devoured. That was also the trip to Trader Joe's when I left my credit card there. Which I somehow forgot to blog about, but when I called Trader Joe's back and said, "Do you have my credit card" and they said "Yes, we have it!" it was one of the proudest moments of my life, and the first time I've ever really felt like an adult, because that's a really adult thing to have done.

But anyway, most of the leftovers from that group meeting I just donated to the lab fridge, but seriously, for real-io, I wasn't about to do that with the Trader Joe's goat cheese. Seriously, both of our Russian postdocs are ravenous, and I knew that it would be gone by about 10 AM the next day if I didn't get it out of there.

And since then, I've made a bunch of really, really outstandingly delicious dishes, which just would have been kind of tasty and pleasant without Trader Joe's Chevre, but with it, they basically did a Wade Robson dance routine on my tongue. I'd like to share three of them with you.

So, yeah, I know that the cheese is not that attractive when it melts, kind of a butterface of dairy goodness, but it was still pretty good on top of my leftover bbq tri-tip/squash soup. Way better was the accompanying salad, which is arugula, sour cherries, toasted pecans, chevre, and just a little oil and balsamic vinegar.
This is my attempt at Cheeseboard Pizza as part of a balanced meal, and seriously, you know that Trader Joe's chevre is delicious when I got Cheeseboard Pizza and it was the part of my meal that I was least excited about. This is sort of the above salad's less outgoing older sister; it's spinach, peas, grapes, toasted walnuts, and chevre, again with a little balsamic vinegar. Yeah, she may not get all the guys, but she's got kind of a sexy librarian quality about her, and her first daughter speaks three languages.

And this is pasta with arugula, more pecans, chevre, roasted beets, and lemon zest, furthering the theory that I can basically just clean out my refrigerator and toss Trader Joe's chevre on it and it will be delicious. You can ask Ruthie, I was really excited about this, and I wanted to convince her to make it, so I listed all the ingredients in an e-mail to her, to which she responded, "Sorry, Spamdor - roasted beets? I had cookies for dinner the other night, and bread two nights ago."

I mean, my dinner last night was technically Guinness and a chocolate cupcake, so whatever.

The death of pi

DID YOU KNOW? i to the i power is equal to e to the negative pi over two.

If you're reading this blog, then it probably hasn't escaped your attention that today is pi day. 3/14. Yep. Pi day. That's it. Strangely enough, I always end up forgetting about pi day, probably because Sam's Mom's birthday is tomorrow, on the Ides of March, and I'm usually too busy thinking of last-minute gift ideas to worry about inexcusably poor approximations of the world's second-greatest irrational number (seriously, phi for life).

But yesterday I got this e-mail from the exquisitely-named Ladan Lynn Hagar, who works in my lab:

Hi guys, let's celebrate pi day tomorrow with some pie! I'll bring in a homemade pecan pie and we can munch at 3pm in the radlab lounge (where the fridge is). Whoever can cite pi to the longest # of digits gets the biggest slice. ;)

The more sweets the merrier, so feel free to bring something if you have time, but don't worry if you don't.

Loddie

My third thought, after, "Oh man, I'm totally going to pwn in the pi recitation contest" and "Oh, but I need to go running later, maybe I should forfeit the massive slice of pie that this victory will entail" was, "Oh, I could make a pie. That would be awesome." Loddie made a pie for her thesis-signing party, and one pie was totally not enough for all the starved, pie-craving grad students who came to witness the event. So I figured we could use another. I was already roasting some beets for dinner and then baking some bread after that, so I decided to go with the secret Sam's Mom family recipe for peanut butter pie, which requires no baking, just a 3-4 hour repose in the refrigerator.

1 8-oz. package Philadelphia Cream Cheese
1 14-oz. can Eagle Brand sweetened condensed milk
1 12-oz. jar smooth peanut butter
1 8-oz. tub Cool Whip
a pie crust

Using a mixer, mix the cream cheese and the milk together until creamy. Mix in the peanut butter. This will become more sticky than any edible substance you could possibly imagine. Then get out a spatula and fold in half the tub of Cool Whip. Pour into the pie crust of your choice. The best choice is Oreo. Serve with the rest of the Cool Whip on top.

I really love this recipe. It's so harmonious in that it uses only five packaged products, and it uses exactly one package of each. It's like the products were designed specifically as means to the end of peanut butter pie. It's like in Everything is Illuminated, when Lista says, "The ring is not in case of you. You are in case of the ring."

But let me just say that this pie has been a total disaster since the moment I said it. First of all, I forgot that Cool Whip needs to be defrosted for four hours before it's usable. So buying cool whip at 10 PM in the hopes of finishing a peanut butter pie by 11 PM is not really a viable solution. After some consideration, I decided to get up early (which, for me, is 8:11 AM) and make it before class.

Even this was not without incident, because, first of all, most of my cookware is still at Nate's apartment from our epic ChemE recruiting weekend breakfasts last week, and I totally need to get that back pretty soon. So, whatever, I mixed the peanut butter pie in a pot. Also, apparently they stopped making 12-oz jars of peanut butter, or at least selling said jars at safeway, so I had to go with an 18-oz jar of peanut butter and just estimate 2/3 of it. Which, like, math is hard, Barbie. This confusion, combined with the unthinkably early hour also caused me to mistakenly fold an entire tub of cool whip into the pie. Great, now I have an extra cool-whippy pie with an indeterminate amount of peanut butter in it. I really was not achieving the zen state that usually accompanies my preparation of peanut butter pie.

But anyway, I still managed to get it into the pie crust, and it looked okay, so all it needed was a quick trip to the lab to chill out in our lab fridge until the 3 PM celebration. So I loaded it in my reusable cloth Trader Joe's bag that earns me a ticket in a $25 raffle every time I go to Trader Joe's, threw it over my shoulder, and headed off on my merry way to class.

Except, yo, apparently people who shop at Trader Joe's all have eating disorders, because the bags they sell you are, in general, way small. The base of the bag totally looked large enough to keep my extra-cool, extra-whipped pie flat throughout the course of my entire journey to school. But I'm a chemical engineer, not a mechanical engineer; that means I'm good at making pies, not transporting them. So I hadn't even made it two blocks up to Oxford St before the pie was already on its side, slowly slipping out of its delicious Oreo crust! Disaster!

And that, I mean, would not have been such a problem if I didn't then move the bag to my handlebars, where it traveled a block with me before swinging fantastically into my wheel, lodging itself between the frame and rapidly-rotating spokes. And, yo, I'm still not good at solid mech or anything, but I was shocked by how deformable peanut butter pies are. Like, my pie was kind of a mobius strip after my wheel got done with it.

So I made it into lab about ten minutes later and decided to survey the damage. And, I mean, I've learned a lot today, mostly about the care and handling of fragile objects such as pies, which will no doubt serve my adopted kids well. Note to self--don't carry them around in a Trader Joe's bag attached to the handle bars of a recklessly-controlled bicycle. I've also learned that I can wash peanut butter out of a Trader Joe's bag fairly effectively in a bathroom sink, and that custard-based pies seem to be fairly resistant to destruction, as long as you scrape them back into a shape vaguely resembling a pie in their pan.

But anyway, everything was made right again when National Medal of Science winner John Prausnitz made a guest appearance at our pi day celebration. Yes, that's right, I have made pie that was eaten by a National Medal of Science winner. I know, you're jealous. This is going right on my resume. I think he didn't really believe my story about its destruction, and, I mean, he invented UNIQUAC, so maybe I didn't really smash a peanut butter pie with my bike. I don't know. But anyway, celebrating pi day with an octogenarian National Medal of Science winner who's been on the faculty of Berkeley for 53 years always makes for some interesting conversation. After we discussed Lyme disease and the fact that current grad students are wussies because they don't discuss opera with him in lab on Saturdays, Professor Prausnitz simply observed our conversation for a while, and then opined: "What is the difference between awesome and cool?"

I was going to explain to him that awesome was way better, because it literally describes something so impressive that it inspired awe. But I think I've come up with something better since then. Cool is having peanut butter pie at a pi day party in your lab. Awesome is having peanut butter pie that you ran over with your bike at a pi day party in your lab with a National Medal of Science winner.

114 Songs

DID YOU KNOW? Vanna White insisted that her parents buy her a 1972 Volkswagen Beetle as her first car, mostly because its initials were the same as hers.

I did a blagosearch last night and discovered that I've been blogging for, what, like, two months now, and I haven't explicitly mentioned American Idol once. Seriously, I haven't even mentioned Paula Abdul. What is wrong with me?

So I finally caught this week's Beatles episodes this afternoon, and so far I don't have too much to say about this season, except that it's good this webclip exists and also that Ruthie exists, because otherwise I'd have to spend a lot of time thinking up words to describe Amanda Overmyer other than "tranny hot mess." Also, I kind of want Kelly Clarkson to come back on the show, open her gaping maw, and devour Carly Smithson whole. I mean, Kelly and I have kind of had a falling out since My December, but seriously, the last thing this country needs right now is a bartending Irish Kelly Clarkson tribute singer.

But anyway, since high school, since Trenyce, I've been compiling the list of songs that I'm going to sing when I go on American Idol, and seriously, I chose some really awesome songs that I thought nobody would ever pick, and you know what? Half of them have already been sung on American Idol. And this evening I was totally shocked when Jason Castro, who looks like Kendall when we gave her dreadlocks on the train back from Switzerland, did this kind of tragic version of "If I Fell," which is actually my favorite Beatles song.



So, without further ado, here's the rest of my current list for becoming the most awesome American Idol contestant of all time. Except Fantasia, because seriously, girl had a tough life. I mean, I watched Life Is Not A Fairy Tale: The Fantasia Barrino Story, so I know these things.

"Vehicle" -- Ides of March
I kind of didn't even think it would be possible to do this song on American Idol, and then Bo Bice had to go and somehow justify doing it on disco night, and I mean, he actually did fairly well, even though I disagree completely with his microphone-holding technique, Bo is a pretty good singer. Anyway, it's just as well, because I would really have had nothing to add to Bo's performance.

"Macarthur Park" -- Richard Harris
Seriously, season 4 disco night was just not good for my dreams of American Idol stardom, but the world is much improved by having Carrie Underwood's bizarre disco performance immortalized for all time, and I really don't know what I would have responded to Ryan's inevitable question of "What does 'someone left the cake out in the rain' mean?" Whatever, she has an awesome stylist now and is super-hot, and will smash your truck with a baseball bat if you cheat on her. So actually I'm scared for my life now, if she ever reads this.

"Somebody to Love" -- Queen
So Somebody to Love is my second-favorite Queen song ever (I Want It All) and Elliott Yamin is my second-favorite male American Idol contestant ever (Bo Bice), and as a result I still kind of love this performance even though I objectively know that it's a little bit atrocious. Seriously, I just love how he looks like an adorable little troll singing Freddie Mercury. Somebody to Love is basically my theme song for life, and so I'm kind of glad Elliott messed it up, because it will make my performance thereof seem way more awesome.

"Runnin' Out of Fools" -- as performed by Aretha Franklin
So I think I'm going to do this in the top 20 or something, it's going to be my breakout performance, my Whipping Post, if you will. A lot of people have told me that every gay man secretly wants to be a black woman, so, you know, something would be up if I didn't belt out a little Aretha at some point during my tenure on American Idol. I mean, it's perfect for 60's night, and little girls everywhere will cry when I go, "'cause this time you are not gettin' through to me!"

"Heroes" -- David Bowie
So, I'd start this one really quiet, and really slow, only acoustic guitar, with the "I wish you could swim" verse, and I have this great hand motion that I've been preparing for "like the dolphins that swim in the sea." So, I'd finish that verse, and I'd sing the electric guitar part in falsetto. Then I'd hit a really clear high note, a high D, if you're wondering, and hold it, and there'd be a huge buildup in the band, with pounding drums, and then I'd belt out the "I, I CAN REMEMBER!" verse, like, totally Vegas, and end with an ad-libbed "Yeah, we could be heroes, just for one day-ee-ay!" It would be awesome, and Simon would have to do that thing where he thinks up a way to say "totally too queer" without actually saying it. I think he'd go for "a little self-indulgent," but I'd be in the pimp spot so I'd still make it through to next week.

"The Great Curve" -- Talking Heads
I was originally meaning to go with Psycho Killer, but then Dilana performed that on Rock Star, and seriously, nobody other than me is ever going to perform The Great Curve on television. I mean, I don't have much to add to David Byrne's general freakout, but wait until you see me hop around the stage and do 360-degree turns in midair when we get to the "WORLD MOVES ON A WOMAN'S HIPS!" section.

"Jolene" -- Dolly Parton
I definitely need something to do on country night, so I just came up with this one this year, when I found out that you can now play instruments on American Idol. I mean, I play piano well enough to play a total of two different songs for the purposes and drunken singalong. But I assume that by the time that I make American Idol, I will have learned how to play the banjo, so I'm basically just going to stand in the middle of the stage wearing all white, bathed in blue-green light, and sing "Jolene" by Dolly Parton. It will be really thoughtful, and Randy will think it was a little slow for him dawg, and just a'ight, but Paula will disagree and know that I let the true heart of my personality star shine for us all to hear.

"(This Is) The Dream of Win & Regine" -- Final Fantasy
Oh man, I'm gonna rock this one. Basically, it starts with just one cello note, and I'm standing there in front of the microphone stand with my eyes closed, thoughtfully, and I'm all "crown myself the prince of buzz..." and then I sing the first verse basically a capella, and I do two awesome things. The first is that they zoom in on my face, and then when I get to the second line, as I sing "but... what if they like it?" I open my eyes and it's very dramatic. Then I do a little turn on the word "accordion" and then the second awesome thing is that when I sing "we can get along" I plagiarize one of David Byrne's dance moves from Once In A Lifetime, but I'm not going to tell you which one. Then I sing "but Montreal won't keep us down... no, never..." So I pull the microphone out of the stand and the band plays the violin riff, and I run in my sneakers down to that weird little bridge right behind the judges, from which I sing the second verse. I do little ornamentations on "we can get along" that are very impressive and showcase my range, and then I skip the last instrumental break and go right into "I tried and tried and tried...", which I finish on the word "a-way," and I hold it out as a glory note and kind of sing along to the trombone part. And then the band plays the violin riff one last time, and I fall to my knees in this awesome Freddie Mercury pose on the last three violin notes. The best part is that after I'm in the final 2, Owen Pallett actually shows up to play violin with me on the finale. I know, right?

I mean, okay, I trained over 100 hours for the Napa Valley Marathon; I had a lot of time to think about things like this.

So fresh, not clean

DID YOU KNOW? Rachael Ray's favorite band is apparently The Foo Fighters.

Yesterday they came for Fresh. I keep telling people this and they keep not understanding me. Fresh is the name of the dude that lives in the tree just off of Sproul Plaza on campus. I think the technical term is tree-sitter. He's been there for a couple weeks now, as far as I know. I think he started out in one tree, and then one day he wasn't there, and now he's in another tree. Yeah, I don't know the story behind all of that.

I mean, it doesn't seem implausible for him to move between the trees, because one day were were standing down on College Ave waiting for a bus, and this dude walked by, and he was like, "Do you know where the Mickey Hart concert is?" We said, "No, sorry." And he was like, "Aw, man, he's the drummer for the Grateful Dead!" And we were like, "Okay, we still don't know." So he was standing there waxing rhapsodic about Mickey Hart for a little bit, and we were like, "I think that guy over there knows," pointing at Colin.

Yeah, all the great stories happen to Colin. So apparently the guy asked about the concert some more, and then revealed that he was one of the tree-sitters that's been living in the oak grove on campus for almost 500 days now. The police have fenced off the grove, and also the bear statue in front of the football stadium, but apparently now the tree-sitters have ziplines that they can use to move between the trees and over the fence. The Mickey Hart fan provided evidence of this by covertly pulling a carabiner out of his... out of his sarong, I guess. According to Colin, later in the conversation he pulled out a bong in a much less clandestine fashion.

Only in Berkeley.

So Mike, who I've wanted to nickname Liszka-bob (rhymes with shish-kebab) for the longest time, apparently knows a lot about what's going on with Fresh. Cops are contracted to watch him 24/7, and apparently some of them actually sympathize with him, and tell him rambling stories about their time in Vietnam. The cops don't really do much else except arrest people who try to supply him with food and water. Liszka-bob told us that just two days ago, they were apparently "tackling old ladies" who attempted to throw cold water bottles at Fresh. I don't know, I think that with a couple packs of Clif Bars, he'd be set for quite a while. But then again, my grandfather crash-landed in the Pacific during World War II and was adrift at sea with Eddie Rickenbacker for 24 days. So maybe I'm not that impressed by Fresh, so far.

So we were walking out of transport yesterday morning and we noticed that a huge crowd was forming around the makeshift barricades that the police erected around Fresh's tree. "This is going to be interesting," we all thought, and to be honest, I kind of regretted not going to any of the marine recruiting center protests earlier this year, so I was pretty happy to get a first-hand look at this one. Basically, a cop was standing at the base of the tree, putting a ladder up to one of its branches, presumably with the intention of climbing up and removing Fresh therefrom. And, I mean, you know it's the year 2008 because my first reaction was to take a picture on my camera phone and text message it to Ruth. I'd put it on the blog, but I think I'd have to pay Verizon another dollar.

"What do you think? Should I come down?!" asked Fresh. I think I might be exaggerating a little bit, but the reaction seemed to be overwhelmingly "YES!" Like, I think the crowd was at least 75% in support of the police. Or, maybe, just 75% in support of something awesome happening. Because, really, he's been there for a while now, and it's getting kind of boring, and I'm not going to protest BP with him because BP pays my rent, and I'm not gonna protest for "BONGS NOT BOMBS" because seriously that doesn't even make any sense. So, I mean, when the cops started to move the cherry-picker truck, I totally got out of its way. Because, seriously, this is Berkeley, you can see a dude with an adjective for a name living in a tree any day, but how often do you see him extricated from that tree with a cherry-picker?

So, since that attempt at provoking an angry mob kind of failed, Fresh changed his strategy. "This bucket is full of all my shit from the past two weeks! What do you think? Should I pour it on his fucking head?" asked Fresh. Apparently his nickname refers to his choice of language. Seriously, Fresh, what would your mom think? But, yeah, the crowd was a lot more receptive to that idea. Luckily, Fresh did not do that. Instead, he just pulled off the top part of the ladder and threw it on the ground, which was still kind of cool.

"He just keeps racking up the felonies," noted Bean. Emboldened by this success, and the cheering of the crowd that followed, Fresh decided to use this opportunity to communicate his message to the hundreds of gathered spectators:

"I just want to say that every nuclear weapon ever..."
"SHUT THE HELL UP!"

Yeah, it's really not 1967 anymore.

What Fresh was about to say, most likely, is his oft-repeated trope that every nuclear weapon that has ever been produced by the United States was manufactured by the University of California at Berkeley. I mean, yeah, Seaborg, Oppenheimer and a bunch of major players were all tapped from Berkeley, but I feel like "manufactured" is kind of a specific word, and not one that really applies in this case. I think if we actually were contracted by the government to produce hundreds of nuclear weapons over the past 50 years, the University could have found some money to pay for alcohol during our recruiting weekend.

So yeah, Fresh was all, "Every nuclear weapon..." and some other guy yelled, "SHUT THE HELL UP!" and Liszka-bob turned to us and was like, "Nobody cares!" and this dude standing next to us asked, "Then why are you standing here listening to him if you don't care what he's saying?" I wanted to say that it's because this is the most entertaining bit of schadenfreude since America's Most Smartest, or perhaps even Next Top, Model, but that seemed a little too cynical of a commentary on American society.

Maybe my main problem with Fresh is that I don't really get what he wants us to do. As far as I can tell, he wants the UC regents to be democratized, and he wants the university to reject the $500 million grant that BP just gave us to do biofuels research, and he wants BONGS NOT BOMBS, or so the sidewalk in front of him proclaims, and he really hates nuclear weapons. I mean, okay, the other tree-sitters, I'm down with them, because they just want one thing, and that's that the university doesn't tear down an oak grove in order to build a new athletic center. And, I mean, seriously, the RSF is in shambolic condition, they could maybe work on that first, without clear-cutting some old trees. But, I mean, I figure that once Berkeley agrees not to build the football center in the middle of the oak grove, they'll leave. Fresh, I'm not sure when he'll ever leave. Total nuclear disarmament of the United States? Repayment of all the money I earned last year back to BP? Free bongs in public schools? Like, set your goals a little lower, Fresh.

And, I mean, a bunch of people were heckling him and asking that. One particularly vocal counter-protester kept yelling, "IF YOU SUPPORT YOUR CAUSE, SHOW YOUR FACE," referring to the towel that Fresh has wrapped around his head (dude, he probably just wants to prevent heatstroke; haven't you ever seen Survivorman?). But really, I think Fresh is just worried that he's going to be identified. Rumor has it that his real name is Pierre. And, I mean, seriously, I'd go by Fresh, too.

But, yeah, that particular heckler was also repeatedly asking Fresh to more clearly state his message. All Fresh could really come up with on such short notice, and under such considerable police pressure, was "I just want to stop the bullshit that's going on at this university!" Bean commented to us, "I don't know if the shit is in this university, I kind of think that it's up there in that bucket right now." And then this old guy with dreadlocks standing behind us replied, "No, man, the bullshit's there in your mind, when you're making comments like that!"

And that's when I saw Jess Kuo! She was there reporting the Daily Californian! Seriously, I never really knew her that well, except sort-of as Mitra's friend, and I keep thinking I see her, but then I feel like a racist because I'm all, "No, not every Asian person on campus is Jess Kuo." Although that would be preferable. But this Asian person had a camera, and I figure if Jess Kuo ran the last .2 miles of the Boston Marathon backwards so that she could document the event for Mitra and I forever, she'd definitely be around capturing all of this on film. It turns out that she actually got it on audio, too. You can hear the article here.

So the rest of the morning went off pretty much without event, or relatively. The chief of police came and said that Fresh would not be arrested or identified if he came down in the next five minutes. A girl read this note and then was later dragged off by the police after she refused to leave. A bunch of students provided a countdown for Fresh, but this was also ineffective. Some cops climbed up and pulled down his hammock, but didn't go any further, perhaps for fear of really bad publicity for the university as they tackled a hippie out of a tree, or perhaps for fear of his poop-bucket. Anyway, I really didn't think he was going to last very long without his hammock, and, to tell the truth, I was kind of sad that the whole affair was going to end like that. Or end in any way that didn't involve a cherry picker. And maybe a knife fight.

But I passed Fresh again on my way to kinetics this morning and noticed that someone had supplied him with a new hammock. Seriously, I don't know how they worked that one out, but the prevailing theory among our class is "t-shirt gun." Because, I mean, how awesome would that be?

You know, only I could witness the amazing display of civil disobedience that I saw yesterday and still be upset that it didn't somehow involve a cherry picker, a knife fight, and a t-shirt gun. But seriously, most occurrences in my everyday life could be improved by the inclusion of those three things.

Then nothing is cool

DID YOU KNOW? According to Tim Gunn, Season 4 designer Victorya was shocked to find out that contestants on Project Runway were actually required to complete garments in one day. She had assumed that the show falsified its timeline to make the designers appear more talented than they actually were.

I think people don't realize, or do realize, but are unable to verify, that pretty much everything I say is misappropriated from someone else that I admire. Or, at least, everything interesting that I say. I realized that people who think I'm cool don't actually think I'm cool, but rather they just think that quotes from my favorite youtube clips are cool. They just don't know it.

Three separate conversations from last night, for instance:

DN: "These chips are amazing, aren't they?"
SM: "Oh my God, yes. And this I love this salsa so much that I want to take it behind the middle school and get it pregnant."
DN: "Sam, why do you say the greatest things?"

HPG: "I heard the most awesome joke. Helen Keller walked into a bar. I guess she didn't smell it coming!"
SM: "Oh my God, that's seriously my favorite joke ever. I want to kiss you hard on the mouth.
DN: "Sam, you're amazing."

SD: "Sam, I heard that you recently coined the term manorexic. I think that's awesome."
SM: "Yeah, I mean, actually my Mom called me that a couple years ago. But, I mean, if thinking that I invented it makes you think I'm more awesome, then I totally want you keep that misconception."

I wish there were a way I could communicate such that relevant hyperlinks would spew forth from my mouth as I spoke. I feel like that would be way more honest. Get on it, Media Lab.

(although later in the night I broke out a Bohemian Rhapsody sing-along on the piano, and there's no faking that)

Things that scare me

DID YOU KNOW? According to Gender Guesser, I blog like a girl. With remarkable consistency.

I'm making kind of a lackadaisical effort to get my fluency in German back up to its post-Bayer levels. Like, when I talk to myself in empty elevators, I talk to myself in German now. I also have German Google news on my bookmarks bar, and I even read it like once every two weeks. Most recently, I added German news to my Google Reader, hoping that my compulsion to immediately read all unread e-mails and blog entries would convince me to wade through the sea of umlauts delivered hourly to my inbox. But no no, I currently have over 1,000 unread German news stories on Google Reader.

Yeah, so far, none of this has been very effective. Really, the only thing that's been fun has been reading German coverage of the American presidential election. First of all, the amount of detail used by the German press to describe the election is fascinating. I mean, really, down to all the elections that are taking place in all the states on every day. Down to Huckabee's Rockgruppe. Down to Super-delegaten. Really, the German people apparently give a crap about Super-delegaten.

Also, as far as I can tell, the entire country of Germany has a massive heterosexual man-crush on Barack Obama, and it's really interested to see that play itself out in the media. Like, the American media was all, "blah blee blah, maybe we're not scrutinizing Obama enough," and meanwhile Germany writes headlines like "Clinton struggles against Obama-Mania" and "Clinton's ever-sharpening attacks become voting suicide." Or something like that. In any event, I think American press coverage of the election is getting so convoluted, self-critical, and just overall "meta" that it's really too much for me to process anymore, so it's kind of become comforting to read newspapers that aren't afraid to welcome Obama as our new insect overlord. In German.

Oh, and also American newspapers aren't allowed to refer to him as "the black Obama" three times in the same article.

But yeah, outside of the occasional Spiegel article, I still wasn't too effective at integrating German into my life. So the other day I found out that Facebook now offers a German user interface. Oh man, I thought, I use facebook like four or five times as much as I read the news! What a great idea. I was really excited when I started using it, and I quickly picked up a lot of awse new words like "Freundschaftsanfragen" and "Kurzmeldungen." But after using it for a few days, I have to say, I'm not as sure as when I started. The differences between German and English facebook kind of form an uncanny valley, and, well, I'll just come right out and say it, German facebook scares me.

I mean, okay, this is what I saw at first. No probs, right? Kurzlich aktualisiert? Okay, cool, I didn't know that's how you'd say "recently updated." And, I mean, "actualize" is a word that I totally don't use enough, and I'm totally going to start. Instead of saying, "I'm going to make some dinner," I'll be all, "I've got an idea for an arugula salad in my head that I'm going to actualize right now." So far German facebook is improving both my German and English vocabularies.

So then I asked myself, "Who am I?" Except in German. One time this drunk Dutchman was on the subway with us in Munich after a World Cup game, and he just kept babbling, "Was bin ich? Was bin ich? Ein riesengroßer Alkoholiker. Ein Hollander." It was pretty cool. So apparently the above describes who I am, in German. I love how German takes everything so absolutely literally. Like their word for "grad student" is "student with first completion-of-degree." But, still, nothing out of the ordinary.

One thing I was really disappointed about was not finding out the German words for "random play." It was hard enough to find someone who still had "random play" on their profile, because Facebook got rid of that a few months ago, and only people who had it currently set got grandfathered in. The concept of random play seems so antithetical to the concept of grandfathers. Anyway, I guess because Facebook doesn't actually support random play anymore, only "Networking," they didn't even bother translating it for their German user interface. Lame.

This is when things started getting a little weird. Just notice that things start getting a little crowded within Facebook's normally immaculate user interface, which is second only to Mac in terms of its warm and inviting facade. I was also a little disturbed that Scrabulous didn't bother translating itself into German. Seriously, you can't make it Scrabulecker or anything?
So here's where you start seeing the holes in the armor. Just because you read Facebook in German doesn't mean all your friends do. So they still post all their status updates and everything in English. And really, that just makes you feel like you're some kind of weird, foreign outsider stalking all of your friends. I mean, that's how Facebook should make you feel, but this just amplifies it.

And okay, seriously, as much as I liked learning the word "Freundschaftsanfragen," I don't like how it needs its entire own line. Seriously, just because I want to learn German doesn't mean I can't still be super-cool and fashionable. In fact, I think it makes me cooler. And more fashionable. Just the fact that a word like "Freundschaftsanfragen" exists is kind of creepy. I mean, the whole idea of a "Friendship request" is creepy even in English, but I guess it's easier to parse when it's two words and not one gigantic 20-letter monster of social networking. I guess what I'm trying to say is that German Facebook is scary only because it made me reconsider, in another language, how scary Facebook already is.


Also, this headline from Hillary's website yesterday kind of scared me, as I finally realized the incomprehensibly massive scale of presidential campaigning in the United States. I guess she succeeded in her goal. And remember, she is the candidate that is not good at raising money on the internet.

All the things she said

DID YOU KNOW? Crocodiles run faster than people. Like, way faster. Like, 35 miles per hour. However, they can't change direction as quickly as people can. So if you're being chased by an crocodile, your best bet is to zig-zag as fast as you can.

When I was contemplating my return to the blagoverse, I was strongly considering a tumblelog, just because its interface is well-suited to the dynamic delivery of out-of-context quotes, and I've always liked compiling collections of out-of-context quotes. As my beloved high school friend Shana once wrote,

I like excerpts. They're like snapshots of some element of my life, and when you look at them, you can see one static little window and try to guess what's just outside the contextual frame. I wish I had some more excerpts from stuff to post here.

So, without further ado, here's three excerpts of conversations with Sam's Mom over the course of the past three days.

While driving along the Shoreline Highway:
"Yeah, it's like the time we were playing Trivial Pursuit with Poppy and the answer was 'Little Ricky' and Dad said 'Little Desi.' And Poppy gave it to him! It was like, who knew you were nice?"

While reading the menu outside of Chez Panisse:
"$65 for dinner? Is it all-you-can-eat?"

While discussing religion at the Red Rock Cafe or Darioush, I forget which:
"You know, I'm down with Santa."

Seriously, "I'm down with Santa." That's almost my new motto for life. Like, I've somehow absorbed "I'm down with that" into my vocabulary. It's probably my most recent addition, except for perhaps "awse." So I have no idea how Sam's Mom got a hold of it. But, I mean, good for her. I've tried for years to become a member of Santa's posse, so far without any inkling of success.

Other than that, Sam's Mom, my dad, and I had a good time over the past few days in California. We did the marathon, went wine-tasting, saw the tree people, heard Professor Radke's story about the time his office was filled with wasps, and went to the Stinson Beach. There we took this picture, which is pretty much symbolic of our mother-son relationship.


She's down with Santa. Santa and crocs.

All I ever learned from love

DID YOU KNOW? Helen Keller was a really serious socialist. I mean, really; that's not just a Helen Keller joke.

Helen Keller walked into a bar. Guess she didn't smell it coming.

It's unfortunately very infrequent that I get to use the word "demolished" in reference to something I did, and even when I do, it's usually because I fell asleep standing up again and destroyed an expensive piece of lab equipment. "Yeah, I really demolished that flow ellipsometer when I knocked it off the table. Dang, I gotta start my transport p-set earlier next week."

That being said, Mitra and I totally demolished our marathon personal record this afternoon. Or, rather, this morning, since the Napa Valley Marathon starts at 7 AM. At mile 16, I checked the time on my watch, and commented to Mitra that we'd run 16 miles before I would have otherwise awoken on a Sunday afternoon.

But seriously, both of our Boston times hovered around the 4:15 range, and we finished the Napa Valley Marathon in 3:54:24, and seriously, twelve hours later, I can pretty much walk. That's about as extraordinary as you can get. Really, going into the marathon this morning, I was expecting to kill myself sprinting the last five miles to finish in under four hours. Instead Mitra and I ran the entire marathon at a sub-9:00/mile pace, actually increased our speed during the last 13 miles, and finished the race (which ended, like, in someone's backyard) holding hands, as the clouds parted, bathing us in radiant sunlight, while happy little bluebirds circled above our heads singing the sweetest songs. It was beautiful. People were crying.

Mitra and I spent a few miles debating what had resulted in our unusually astounding performance? Was it the gentle decline that dominated most of the course? Not having to train in 14-degree weather? The extra comfort afforded by actually registering? The zinfandel sorbet that they distributed at Mile 17? The steady tailwind? The massive quantities of awesome bbq that we had devoured the night before? The excited spectating of Mitra's Mom at three points along the course? Seriously, best cheering section ever. Paula Radcliffe could shave at least two or three minutes off of her world record. Or maybe her mom also yells "BOSTON RUNNERS! BOSTON! THEY RAN IN BOSTON! MIT! WOOOOOO! THERE'S MY BABY!"

Really, I think it was love. With all due respect to Dan Savage's definition of love, my interpretation is driving to Baltimore International Airport, flying to San Jose, renting a car, driving to Berkeley, picking up your son , driving to Napa, eating dinner, and then, after 24 hours of travel, driving back to Berkeley and then back to Napa because your son forgot his shoes. And then getting up at 6 AM so that you can be at the marathon on time to see him. Seriously, that's love. And that's why Mitra and I demolished our previous marathon time with almost a one minute per mile improvement.

Sam's Mom rocks.

Other things that are love: finishing a marathon holding hands with one of your best friends, free massages, In-N-Out neopolitan milkshakes.

I have an awse picture of the marathon, but only one, and I'm way in the foreground and Mitra is in the background, and even I'm not that much of a famewhore. I'll wait until I find the ones of Mitra and I are running right next to each other, raising our held hands in utter triumph. Because I told her to pose like that.