Dictators Aren't Below Good Ol' Name-Calling

Okay, so he didn't call him "butthead" or "nincompoop" which would have been AWESOME, but in the past, Venezuelen President Hugo Chavez has called Bush a "donkey," a "drunkard," a "coward," and best of all, "Mr. Danger." Oh wait, it gets better! Now he calls our dear jefe "El Diablo." Hee hee! Well, he does have the cowboy accent and probably the boots to go with.

Also, last year, Chavez showed a keen interest in having a biographical film made starring Oliver Stone as the Venezuelen president. Apparently, Stone passed up the offer (of a lifetime).

And once, he rebutted criticism from Condoleeza Rice by suggesting she had a crush on him.

What a colorful character. Evil, maybe, but colorfully so.

Joey's Trick

Something Joey showed us at work one day:

eyeye

(double vision!)

The Hazards of Dance

I split my pants dancing to Beastie Boys yesterday.

"Kickin lyrics right to your brain, so when you hear that sound you'll be right as rain!"

Help, I need a needle and thread.

Stash the 'Stache

Weird. There's this Arabic looking guy who looks as if he hasn't been in school in quite a few years in the computer lab who is looking through facebook. What business might he have on that site? Maybe it's the moustache that's throwing me way off in my estimate of his age.

I've got a thing against moustaches- they skeeve me out. They look so...child-molester-ish. At the very least they make guys look way older than their actual age, and not in a good way. Older and shadier. The only man who ever looked decent with a moustache was Omar Shariff in Dr. Zhivago, and even then...it was still unsettling.

Also, when will I get "too old" to keep a facebook account? Will my profile be up there forever, forever displaying my activities as "high-tailing it from heaven, burning in hell", like some weird time-capsule or info-age diary or photo album? Oooh, thinking about such a distant future kinda freaks me out. But not as much as moustaches do.

Again With the Drama!

Alias, Heroes, Boston Legal,...and now Sopranos! I've recently gotten into this awesome HBO series. The writing (lots and lots of dialogue) is just terrific. It's comedy, it's very subtly dramatic, there some action, but only because it's a show about the Mob, but it's the writing that makes it a keeper. And also, the characters don't get friggin annoying like they do on 24. 24 is OK, but it's all action, no depth, no wit, no light moments, no funny (yes, it's a noun in my book), and the characters- you just wanna kill them because all their annoying habits and stupid things they choose to do.

I watched the whole second disc (4 episodes, folks!) of the first season of the Sopranos last night after I got home, and that's pretty much what my nights are gonna be like for the next two weeks so that I can take full advantage of my Netflix free 2-week trial...except when I'm in Florida, I guess. Netflix is awesome, folks- get it! I urge you strongly! You've got almost nothing to lose, no tricks, no fine print! And I like their commercials where the family comes home to find all these movie characters in their living room.

(The title of this post is a line from one of the episodes.)

Anthony Jr.: "Is it true that the Chinese invented spaghetti?"

Tony: "Think about it: Why would people who eat with sticks...invent something that you need a fork to eat?"

(Of course, I almost always eat pasta with chopsticks if it's available, with sriracha sauce dribbled all over it. But it's still funny!)

"They're called Hasidim, Paulie."

Paulie: "Hasidim, but I don't believe 'em."

Happy 3.1415926535... Day!

In honor of this special day, a quick poll:

What's everyone's favorite pie?

I love pecan pie- without the pecans.

Caveat

Logical validity doesn't imply truth.

A Link About the Neuro-Law Link

Another great Times magazine article about neuroscience and the law, which taps into my recent surge of interest in the brain.

Divination, presently only a "woolly" and "imprecise" (that would be McGonagall talking) subject taught at Hogwarts, could become a science once we find out more about our brain! In one study, they could predict when the subject was thinking about places vs people by studying the way the brain lit up. That is crazy and cool.

In preparation for the upcoming release of HP 7, I've decided to relate all blog matters to the magical world of Harry Potter. It's like Lent preceding Easter except way more exciting! And I don't have to give up chocolate, which seems to be my latest food obsession.

Yesterday, while I was working at the bookstore, I ate like 7 different kinds of chocolate (cookies, doughnuts, bars, etc.), and was bouncing off the walls. Plus the sun was shining. WowowoWW no one should ever let me eat that much chocolate in one day ever again. I felt like I could fly I was so happy, and also, I felt kind of trapped too because my excess energy and zest for life was bounded by my present surroundings and situation and by not having any wings dammit. Like the only match for my mood would have been flying to the moon on a magic carpet...with an Aladdin. Hmmm this sounds familiar.

It's That 3-Letter Word Again

What does God see when he looks in the mirror?

Dog. Here puppy, puppy!

Unless he is looking into the Mirror of Erised. Hm...what would God see in the Mirror of Erised? What does He desire more than anything else in the whole universe (or multiverse)? Maybe He wants a body. Or world peace. Or a piece of cake.

More importantly, what does Dumbledore see when he looks into the Mirror of Erised? We all know it's not really socks.

Darwin's God

an interesting article from the Times magazine. I especially liked the part where they talk about "spandrel" (page 3), a term coined by some famous evolutionary biologist and his colleague that is used to describe "a trait that has no adaptive value of its own."

Sometimes there is no "why" or "what for"; it just is.