Clovers In The Atmosphere

nothing racist here. just contemplating the eternal paradox of peg city. it is finally of a temperature where outdoor recreation isn't physically dangerous. however, that temperature fundementally endangers the conditions that make it so fun to recreate outdoors. and the roads are getting that brown slush which is totally lame and we almost never have. but at human temperatures, we have those picture perfect fractal snowflakes. and those are always fun. skated better on friday night. was going backwards and crossing over. even got to stick handle a little. trying to skate and hand a puck is surprisingly difficult. it was fun. kyle still embarrased me. damn you, canadians and your comfort with speed on frozen surfaces.

I saw whit stillman's "metropolitan" last night. and I think I loved it. It was a very strange thing. but it was just so pretty and small. I saw last days of disco in the theater in high school through no act of cinematographic hipness of my own. And all I remember from it is that it felt different from other movies and I liked that. it was calmer. I think the same is true of "metropolitan."

there is also something iincredibly charming about setting essentially creating a modern Jane Austin novel which is what "metropolitan" is. (It is actually a story about social interactions of wealthy manhattan preppies (urban haute bourgousie) who have returned from college for christmas. I know it sounds like the run-up to "Less than zero" but I think the restraint that stillman shows with a setup that begs for bombast or mockery are what I liked so much.

There was an interesting sub-plot in the movie when Tom townsend, who opens the movie as the rebellious intellectual, admits to not having read many of the "great books" to which he alludes while Audrey Rouget has. This mirrors the older son and girlfriend of squid & the Whale perfectly.

so apparently this guy from ohio says that rawson thurber's "Dodgeball" was stolen from his screenplay about his life story as a misfit dodgeball champion. this is hilarious in and of itself. NYT has picked this up as a virtuous underdog versus slimy hollywood establishment story. and there certainly seems to be some grounds for that. like a lot of grounds. That being said, they paint mr. thurber as an oily chad using just a single photograph. However, Mr. Thurber was the brains behind "Terry Tate: Office Linebacker" series of Reebok ads which was one of the most brilliant series of commercials I have ever seen. The whole story would be a lot more cohesive if his reputation weren't built on something so good. I am also glad I am not named rawson thurber. although I do have a preppy and offputting name too

cute canadianism of the day: I received an email referring to a job as a "tonne of fun." that is 1000kg of fun, not to be confused with with a "ton of fun" which is a mere 2000lbs of fun. it turns out canadians have more fun because a ton is only 0.907 tonnes.

clovers is in danger of wilting and dying. I am going back on the job market, and I'll be damned if this thing is going to be findable on google when I do. but i can't seem to get rid of it. anyone who has suggestions, feel free to send them.

i was getting to that shame spiral where you haven't contacted a friend in a long time, so you feel like the next contact has to be worth the wait. and you aren't able to come up with something good enough so you keep waiting until the whole thing gets out of control.
for those curious i was ill and prepping a talk for the international seabird conference which i attended last week. I was more fun than it sounds. I am currently trying to bang out 600 high brow yet jargon-free words about Chimpanzee reconciliation behaviour.

here is a funny little sports news tidbit. it is funny, because Todd Bozeman used to coach UCLA and now coaches Morgan State. it is also funny for the one other person who remembers The Lady of Rage's breakout hit "Afro Puffs" in which she states that she, much like this news story, is straight out of Farmville, VA.

nice work, joe biden. I think at issue here, equal to whether or not his is a racist, is the fact that he is clearly untrustworthy in diplomatic situations. we can't have a president running around saying that ehud barak is the only arab who isn't a dirty terrorist. sen. biden, I hope you are george allen are very happy together.

The email signature of an undergraduate american citizen at an american university undergraduate includes a listing for his "mobile" number. accetable or pretentious?

there is a cultural myth that inuit have 98 words for snow. (They do have a bunch, but it is only about 20). And that the diversity of one's language on a subject indicates the need to delineate subtle differences easily. well, then canadians have 98 words for hockey. I learned a new one last night, "shinny." It is an informal version of ice hockey played with skates but no pads, and frequently goals marked with found objects. My armchair etymology assumed that it was called this because the puck could not go above the shin (which is a common aspect of shinny due to the lack of padding), but the word actually derives from the scottish game "shinty." shinny should not be confused with "spongee" which is basically the same thing, but without skates. according to wikipedia, spongee was developed because below -30C, skates cannot gain good traction on ice. I love canada.

I tried skating last night on my yard sale hockey skates. it was pretty hard. I had only skated with figure skates in the states, so I left huge gauges where the toe pick would have been at the end of each stride. it was fun, but very cold.