R.I.P. Mr. Miyagi San

Noriyuki 'Pat' Morita waxes off into the sunset. His spirit lives on in every nine-year-old boy attempting to perform the crane technique.

In cheerier news, the Ig Nobel Prizes were announced a while ago. These prizes were founded to honor scientific research that I wish I was involved in. Highlights include:

The invention of Neuticles.

Determining whether people swim faster in water or syrup.

And my personal favorite, a detailed study of the pressures produced when penguins poop.

Happy Thanksgiving (except for Turkeys)

Hopefully, all the readers out there had a lovely Thanksgiving. As for yours truly, I had a wonderful family style meal... in Chinatown! Yep, the fam is in town and we decided to do the most American thing we could think of, go be consumers down in Chinatown. My dad is up one cheap duffle bag and I am up one full stomach. A successful outing all around.

Flame on!

So Coca Cola is starting a campaign enlisting 'rock stars' to shell out for some sort of new coke bottle. Why am I telling you this? Well, because the Flaming Lips put out a video for this campaign. (Warning! Loud Drums will Rock You!) And if you click here you'll get to see a stop motion video involving robots that has nothing to do with coke, so far as I can tell. I can tell that Steven wants to rock hard on those drums though. Other rock bands associated with the campaign, include the White Stripes and the New Seekers.

Legalize This!

I don't know my readers' opinions on file sharing, but I've finally gone legal. Thats right, I'm shelling out the big bucks to Real Networks for their Rhapsody music service. And by big bucks, I mean $2 a month through a deal with the Berkeley. All the songs download really quickly and you can use it on any computer (if you download the player). You don't actually get to keep the files, but do I really want Silverchair's 'Tommorrow' clogging up my hard drive when I can just hit play again and listen to my heart's content?

In other news, one of my students tonight told me that I might have chosen the wrong career path. What path might have better suited me? Well, I might want to try being a pimp. Because what I do with algebra is what pimps do with words. Yeah, don't ask me what that means either.

Weasley, Weasley

So, I went to the new Harry Potter movie on opening night. Apparently, I am getting too old for this sort of thing. I base this on the fact that we were the oldest people in the theatre (gross!) and that when Harry Potter took off his shirt, girls in the audience were whistling (I feel dirty now).

Anyways, on to the review! Apparently somewhere between this movie and the last, the girl playing Hermione got a two for one deal on overacting facial expressions class.

Yeah, yeah, smug it up all the way to the bank.

Warning: SPOILERS ahead!!!

If you read the last post in this blog, you know that I am playing Surf Wax America on a banjo in a month. This started from a harmless little jam session, which was partially precipitated by Gavi (playing guitar and singing) plopping down a bunch of money for a digital eight track to record his band. He had it setup for messing around and we just left it running while we were playing.

At one point I went into the American folk song, "Red River Valley." For some reason I said, "Yeah, you've probably heard it before" and proceeded to sing along. Thankfully, the mike was on the banjo so you can't really hear me sing. Nevertheless, this one should keep you amused for a while.

Bmax tries out for Randy, Simon and Paula

The Sea is Foaming

Here's a chain of events for you:

1) You play banjo, thats pretty cool
2) We should get together and play sometime
3) Ha, Ha, this is fun
4) We should play something at the physics department holiday party
4) What would be a good song?
5) Weezer is always a good choice
6) Lets play "Surf Wax America"

So, it looks like I'll be playing 90's rock/bluegrass for physicists and their families in a couple of months. Either wish me luck or laugh at the situation, both are probably appropriate at this juncture.

Get the Led out

Today, I voted, or rather I turned in a provisional ballot (sidenote: why is it still an election if we are only voting on ballot propositions?). Nevertheless, I'm fairly confident that my vote counted for two reasons:

1) I only moved within the same county, which means my old registration should still be valid according to the envelope of my provisional ballot
2) I updated my address with the DMV, which should have updated my voter registration as well

The second point was precipitated by a speeding ticket I earned earlier. This brings me to the next issue of this blog, my impending date with traffic school. Traffic school, much like this blog, is now available on the Internet. But now, I'm saddled with the difficult choice of what school to virtually attend: Comedy Traffic School, Happy Traffic School, Too Lazy for Traffic School, Fun-4u-Fast-2, Simple Fast Fun, Traffic School with Interactive Games, or Improv the Comedy Club Presents.

In the spirit of special electing, I'll leave it up to you the reader to decide. Cast your vote in the comments and a learning I'll go.

Great inventions throughout history

Earlier today, I had a brief argument about how ingenious the ZIP-code is and how much Fedex and UPS are ripping off the United States Government. They get to use the world's greatest mechanical sorting system without paying any sort of royalties. And all this is happening while the USPS is forced to raise its rates. In honor of this inauspicous state of affairs, I would like to salute Robert Aurand Moon, inventor of the Zone Improvement Plan and its associated codes.

While we are on the subject of ripoffs and rants I have gone on, I saw Chris Rock: Bigger and Blacker the other day and he totally stole my schtick about banning bullets. Now, I have no idea how he was in Mr. Movies in Cedar Rapids, IA circa 1995 when I first made this tirade, but I want my percentage of that comedy special!

Culture Clash

I attended a play put on by the Beijing People's Theatre this afternoon. The play was in Chinese with supertitles projected on a screen above the stage. By supertitles, I mean that they put up a translation of about one sentence from each page of dialogue. So, I definitely did not get all of the jokes or much of the story. In the process, I learned that there are many aspects of Asian culture that I just don't understand.

Specifically, I am talking about the groups of college kids that incessantly practice dance routines on campus. These routines are basically on the level of high school poms. I mean, no one is getting served anywhere in the vicinity. So, what is going on? Where do they perform these dance routines? And why don't they practice indoors?

In other news, Net Force finished out the season with one win. Oorah!

Things I accomplished

Today, I stepped over that line between man and boy. No, I'm not talking about some metaphorical line or any of that mumbo jumbo. I'm speaking of the mystical yellow line in the parking lot of the grocery store that says though shalt not take your shopping cart beyond this point.

Honestly, I didn't intend to cross the line, I just happened to park beyond it. As I pushed my gorceries out to the car, the cart suddenly stopped in its tracks. I quickly realized I was in no man's land and pushed the scraping cart the final fifty feet to my car and sheepishly returned it to the gorcery cart graveyard at the edge of the yellow line. Somebody should really work out how to make the boot reverse itself once you get back inside the yellow line.

In the news of wierd things happening to me, I was given a loaf of stale rye bread for Halloween. As we were milling about our cars on Monday at San Quentin State Prison, a lady from some other volunteer group came over and said "Here, have this loaf of bread. Its handmade." In the ensuing confusion the bread was eventually passed to me for safe keeping. I'm pretty sure that:

1. That bread was not homemade
2. The bread was not originally intended as a Halloween present to strangers

Nevertheless, it is now residing in my kitchen and I ate some, so I know that there weren't any razor blades in it.

Finally, its a new month and I must once again fill my Flaming Lips quota. Today's entry comes courtesy of Billboard magazine where Wayne says the new album is gonna rock, specifically like Black Sabbath. You'll notice that Paranoid is in the coveted 'Now Here This' spot, because it rocks hardcore and contains such magnificent poetry as:

Robot minds of robot slaves lead them to atomic rage
plastic flowers, melting sun, fading moon falls upon
dying world of radiation, victims of mad frustration
Burning globe of oxy'n fire, like electric funeral pyre

I thought it only came once a year

So, I saw Serenity over the weekend and it was good, but thats neither here nor there. What was there though, was a surprise on the way home. While walking down the sidewalk on my street, I noticed something out of the ordinary sitting up against the trunk of a tree. I stooped down and picked up two unopened copies of 'R Xmas. Obviously, this must have been a gift from the gods. So, I took one copy and paid the other one forward.

Things to file in the things I enjoy about California folder include crosswalks (yeah, I don't even look both ways anymore, take that $371 fine carman) and Judge Wapner weighing in on the upcoming special election. No on 77! In other news, Frankenstein and Bunnicula tied for least welcome at the monster party. And there is a new poll up that will settle once and for all what is the worst bone.