08-09 Season Wrap-up and Quote Book

It's that time of year again, the Frozen Four is over, and it's time to pause and look back on the year that was in UNH hockey. October started out well, with wins over Wisconsin (turned out to not be that big a deal) and BU (turned out to be the only one we'd get against them), but our celebrations died as the team could only muster one win in the entire month of November, and that was a 4-3 squeaker against cellar-dwelling Providence. Non-NCAA-bound Minnesota beat and tied us, Foster went down, and his back up gave up 8 goals each to Lowell and BC, we lost to Merrimack, and blew yet another 3-goal 2nd period lead to BC. November was uglier than Alfond Arena. Things looked grim. UNH might not get home ice in the HE quarters. They might not win 20 games. They might not make the NCAA's.

December, though, was a month of hope. UNH swept a Lowell team that had beat them handily a few weeks earlier, scored 4 goals in the 1st against Holy Cross, gave up the next 4 goals through the second, then scored 5 goals in the 3rd to win 9-4. My sister got re-married. And, a certain Hoser asked out a certain BU fan (and she said yes).

After the November slump, UNH only lost 4 regular season games (2 to this year's powerhouse, BU; 1 to national semifinalist UVM; and one to Maine, at the Verizon, which sucked), snagged the 3rd seed from UVM, locked up a berth to the NCAAs, and finished the regular season with 19 wins. Getting swept from the playoffs by BC sucked, but the extra week of rest seemed to pay off, as they came out hungry against UND in the first round of what turned out to be the most insane NCAA tournament in memory, that saw comeback after comeback, and enough late-game heroics to give Charles Atlas a heart attack.

UNH was not above giving their fans heart issues, as they scored with .1 remaining on the clock (that's one tenth of a second - that's the absolute latest you can score) to tie their game against North Dakota, before winning 45 seconds into OT (and in doing so, secured yet another 20-win season). This never happens to us. UNH gets scored on in the final second. They collapse when down two goals. They give up empty netters. They lose by four. Not this team; not this year. Down 5-3 halfway through the 3rd, UNH kept fighting, kept the pressure on, kept playing their hardest. They scored with exactly nine minutes left, and did something remarkable with 5.7 seconds left in the game - they won a faceoff!

However, UNH was also not immune to the heartbreak. In one of the only lopsided higher-seed victories (hell, one of the only higher-seeded victories this year), BU whomped Ohio State to face UNH in the regional final. It was a mismatch on paper from nearly every conceivable angle. BU was the best team in the country. UNH was somewhere in the middle of the pack, and possibly overrated, at that. The Wildcats dug down deep, though, and played the hardest, and probably best, game they played all year, scraping together the goaltending and defense to hold BU to 1 goal through 59 minutes. On the other end, though, Kieran Millan played probably his best game of the tourney, also holding UNH to just 1 goal. Overtime loomed, until a bad line change led to a UNH penalty, and a well-set-up power play led to a BU goal with just 15 seconds left. UNH pulled Foster, and drove the puck into the BU zone, but just didn't have enough time to pot the equalizer, their hard work and good fortune eclipsed by that of BU.

They left everything on the ice, though, and lost to a better team. A roller-coaster season ended with a roller-coaster NCAA tourney, and a team whose own fans expected little from, gave a generation of UNH fans the game of a lifetime with a last-moment comeback, and earned eternal pride for their efforts and composure in the face of a heart-breaking loss. I would like to thank the entire team, but especially those leaving us this year. JVR, best of luck in the AHL/NHL. Hopefully you mature a little, and learn how to use your size effectively (and find some line mates that can match your skill set). To the seniors: not the most talented group we've seen, but the leadership (minus Charlebois) was as solid as any class to come through here in the past ten years. Thank you for the effort, and best of luck in your future endeavors. A special note to Jerry Pollastrone: if you are still blaming yourself, you are the only one. Every UNH fan appreciates your efforts, both that weekend, and in the previous four years.

Of course, BU, being the party crashers they are, had to outdo UNH (and really everyone), by trailing 3-1 with just over a minute remaining before turning the afterburners on and scoring (what should be the trademark of this team) two goals in under a minute to force OT and eventually win the National Championship. Jerks.

Seriously though, it was an awesome Final, and entirely befitting of the craziness of this year's tourney. Congrats to the Terriers. As time goes by, I'm sure my envy and jealousy will diminish (until my next trip to Agganis, when I see the new banner). *sigh* Someday, UNH...someday...

Ah, I'm getting down, and that's not the point of this post. The Frozen Four was spectacular. I call it the final party of the hockey season, and this year was no exception. We had booze, hockey (lots of it), monuments/sightseeing, booze, food, inappropriate comments, booze, inappropriate touching, and yes, even some appropriate touching. In short, it was a great time! My second favorite HE team won the title (making a lot of my friends, including a Very Special Female BU Fan, very very happy), and I got to see Providence and BC fans sporting BU championship gear.

Frustrating at times, it was a fun season overall. While I am looking forward to next year, I am looking forward to free weekends to spend relaxing with my friends (hoser and non-hoser alike), especially a Very Special BU Fan.

And, without further rambling, here is the moment we've all been waiting for, the 2008-09 Quote Book:

10/04/08 - St. Francis Xavier @ UNH
Matt: I think Rob's drunk.
Darci: I think Rob's gay.

10/17/18 - RPI @ UNH
"I'm in the right gender!" - Darci

"Good to see you have the cognitive skills of an eighteen month-year old...dammit." - Rob

11/07/08 UNH @ Minnesota
Scott: Yeah, she doesn't have any common sense.
Gib: Woah.
Scott: what? It's Darci.

Darci: I only understood about half the words you said.
Scott: I think i only said half the words i said.

BU @ UML
"It's like a school full of Keith B's." - Matt

11/14/08 UNH @ UML
"What about Sarah Palin's carpet?" - Matt

12/11/08 Holy Cross @ UNH
"I got bits of Adam's drumstick in my eyes for years." -Scott

"It's not rape if you yell surprise." -variuos

01/04/09 UNH @ Maine
"Competition? They can't say 'game'? What is this, the generic version for any event? Chess matches? Well, it's Maine, so checkers." -Matt

01/17/09 UNH vs Dartmouth
"Oh, I didn't know what you were shoving in my face!" -Darci

01/24/09 BU @ UNH
"I'm not sure if he's gay or from Long Island." -Sarah

01/30/09 UVM @ UNH
"And, if my shirt did come off in celebration, my nipples would not be directed at Minnesota fans." -Matt

02/14/09 UNH @ PC
Matt:It actually would be a good stripper song. It's all about sex.
Darci: Yeah, isn't this the one with the girl eating the cherry pie?
Matt: No, that's "Cherry Pie".
Darci: Oh yeah.

"Just because I'm wearing the Smith jersey, doesn't mean I'm really here." -Matt

02/21/09 UNH @ BC
"I can't believe I fit that much inside me!" -Darci

02/27/09 UNH @ MC
"I generate a lot of force with my stick." -Matt

George: he's got a long stick, and he uses it
Scott: that's what she said.

02/28/09 MC @ UNH
Rob: Stop talking Jon, so we can have sex!
Mike: Yeah, shut up and take it!

03/06/09 UNH @ UVM
Darci: Remember 2007? I lost it in my pants!
Matt: Haven't we all, at some point, lost it in our pants?

Darci: Are you two touching back there?
Gib: No, I just felt the vibration.

George: You guys are erroneous. Erroneous!

03/20/09 Hockey East Semifinals
Shrader: I've never had one.
Darci: They're hard to swallow.

"Get out of my pants!" -Darci

"This is no different than real life!" -Shrader, after putting on Darci's glasses

"Half your age plus seven. So, nine." -Shrader

03/21/09 HE finals
"Hey, that does scratch your tongue." -Shrader

"Hey, you two are cute. Can I have your boyfriend?" -homeless guy

"HELP ME to GET DRUNK" -homeless guy's sign

"Flip-flops are not tank tops." -Sarah

03/29/09 UNH vs. BU, NE Regional final
"I'm gonna rip the T off your shirt so it just says 'Boson'!" -Scott

04/08/09 Frozen Four Wednesday
"For 25 cents, I'll do this for you all night." -Jay

"I swallowed, and I thought that should count!" -Suzie

"You're gonna have all the gumballs you can handle." -Greg

04/09/09 Frozen Four Semifinals
Drunk BU Fan #1: MY NAME IS JAMES!
Drunk BU Fan #2: Dude, that doesn't even make sense.
Drunk BU Fan #1: Yes, it does.
Drunk BU Fan #2: No. It doesn't.
Drunk BU Fan #1: Really?
Drunk BU Fan #2: Yeah.
Drunk BU Fan #1: Oh.

04/10/09 Frozen Four Off-Day
"Look, it's the hard-on collider." -Ricky

04/11/09 Frozen Four Finals
"If we're gonna hammer on Darci, it's gotta be a group effort." -Jay

Shrader: If BU wins, you know what Klein, Brian, and I are gonna do, right?
Dave: Make out?

"My ass is going to be sore by the time I get home." -Darci

"It has frozen ice in it." -Darci

Stalker Blog!

I was recently informed that I've been publishing a stalker blog for the past...well, I guess the past few years (he wasn't very specific about when I stalk-blogged). It got me thinking, and I realized that I hadn't even published anything in a while, so why not prove him right, and do some virtuo-blog-stalkeration.

Where to begin? Well, why not with the obvious? Celery.



Kinda bland. Tend to need something else paired with it to give it some flavor. Fortunately, it seems to agree, and grows in a convenient U shape. Best with peanut butter. Often gets put in salads, but honestly, I'd rather have broccoli. And I don't like broccoli. (Unless I'm chopping it.)

Following in the same vein, we have a vegetable that gained a degree of noteriety in Tim Burton's Batman. That's right, it's that vegetable which, when it belongs to another man, you are not supposed to rub - rhubarb.



What's fascinating to me about this stalk is that someone said, "Y'know, I bet this would be good with strawberries. In a pie!" And even stranger, this person was right! Strawberry-rhubarb pie, while not my favorite, is quite tasty, especially if you close your eyes and try not to think about the ingredients. It's kind of like eating British/Scottish food, except it's actually good.

Moving a bit away from the edible plants, we come to the stalk of a plant that is commonly misconstrued as a cactus, but is actually a flower - the Agave. (click the picture to see the whole thing)



It's used in some medicines, and in an energy drink produced by Snapple. The juice from some species can cause dermititis, though, so only consume if you trust the source. Neat photo, though, eh?

On the subject of stalks with supposedly medicinal purposes, here's the stalk of a plant called the Spotted Joe-Pye Weed, which some believe can help cure Typhus Fever:



And, of course, there are various types of beans that grow on stalks.



This picture is obviously not real, but an illustration from the childrens' story, "Jack and the Beanstalk", which tells the story of Jack Parker, who sells off his prozed recruit, Chris Bourque, for a handful of beans which the fans knock from his hand. They take root where they fall, growing overnight into a beanstalk that Jack climbs to a land above the clouds. There, he meets a giant named Eric, who he recruits to play hockey for them. Or something like that. It's been a while since I've read it, and it's getting late. I may have mixed up some details.

I normally enjoy the show, but a couple of things really bugged me this morning...

First and '07:
I enjoy listening to Fox Sports Radio on my way to work in the morning. I enjoy Steve Czaban's humor, and his rapport with his cohost and producer. However, his consistent harping on the Patriots over what amounted to filming from the wrong location made me shut off the radio this morning for a good 10 minutes as he ranted about "Belicheat" and how the commissioner screwed up the punishment. It shows a clear lack of understanding of what exactly the Patriots "crime" was last season; the same lack of understanding that has permeated through the media and down into the fans. Yes, the Pats were filming defensive signals, but that is not what they got in trouble for. They got in trouble for videotaping from the sidelines. They could have been filming two hours of Ed Hochuli's bulging biceps, and they'd have been breaking the same rule.

A few seasons back, when the Pats were in the midst of their back-to-back Superbowl run, they lost to the lowly (at the time) Dolphins. Miami made Tom Brady look terrible. Dolphins defensive players after the game proudly announced that they had flummoxed Brady so effectively because they had tapes of his audible calls. No fines were levied against the Dolphins, no investigations launched. Why not? Because those signal calls are out there for everyone to hear. Many of them are audible on television broadcast. If you're going to shout something loud enough for everyone to hear it, you better expect them to take note of it in some way, and try to use it against you. The same goes for defensive signals.

Before this year, when radios were implemented on defense, all defensive plays/coverage had to be sent in using very visible hand signals. There's nothing stopping the other team from seeing those signals and trying to interpret them. If you don't think nearly every coach in the league was trying to do just that, you are fooling yourself. And, if you don't think many of them used legal videotaping to do so, you probably also think Wade Phillips is actually a good coach.

The Pats were punished appropriately for the offense they committed - videotaping from the sidelines. I would expect the host of a nationally syndicated sports radio show to understand a little more about what happened than the average fan. I don't mind the gloating that the Pats missed the playoffs (which he did), but please don't try to write it off as some great karmic victory. Especially with the argument that "the team they were caught cheating against" losing to eliminate them was some sort of punishment from the football gods. What about the Jaguars? Had they won, the Pats would be in as the Wild Card team. It came down to the Pats making a couple of critical errors (Dave Thomas's penalties and Gaffney's drop against the Colts, a poor start and terrible D against the Jets) that lost them a couple of games. They won their final 4 games just to stay alive, and managed to win 11 games without Tom Brady, and with a defense that was mediocre-at-best to start the year and wasn't any better after losing nearly 75% of their starters to injury over the course of the season. Yeah, the Jets loss was the final nail in the Pats' 2008 coffin, since their game ended after the Jags/Ravens, but it wasn't any sort of "retribution" from the football gods. It was Brett Favre and the Jets being Brett Favre and the Jets (don't forget, their own playoff lives were on the line, and they still crapped the bed).

It's a minor irritation that this is still coming up; that is to be expected in the sports world. It was a big story, and will never go away. What is more frustrating is how quickly everyone lost sight of what rule the Pats actually broke, and how people in the national media - people whose words influence sports fans all across the country - still disseminate this erroneous information, perpetuating the myth that Belichick and the Patriots are vile, underhanded cheaters.

2nd and '08:

Later in the segment, Czaban asked what fanbase felt worse this morning, Pats fans or Cowboys fans.

How is that even a question?

The Pats started the season as favorites, and then Brady got hurt. Most Pats fans at that point predicted they wouldn't make the playoffs. People were optimistic when Cassel showed he can actually play in the NFL, but with the aforementioned terrible D, no one but the biggest homers thought it was a lock that they'd make the playoffs, especially with the rest of the AFC East playing so well. And then the injuries started to pile up. The season really felt like 2002, the season after their first Superbowl win, when they didn't make the playoffs (coincidentally, they needed help from a Favre-led team). People are upset and disappointed, but no one's really shocked. The Pats won these last 4 weeks. They did what they had to do. They unfortunately put themselves in a position where they needed help, and didn't get it. Oh well, time to figure out how to shore up that defense, keep the offense rolling and make another run next year.

The Cowboys, on the other hand, had their lives in their own hands, and failed miserably. They let the Ravens slip through their hands (literally; have you ever seen tackling that bad? I'm pretty sure they thought Saturday games were two-hand touch), and then, when they were in the ultimate win-or-go-home game, they laid down and got their heads handed to them.

I'm ok with the way the Pats' season ended. They did what they had to do in weeks 14-17. Things didn't break their way. The Cowboys gagged and choked away their season. I will guarantee this: Dallas area sports talk radio stations will be flooded with calls for Wade Phillips' head. Boston area sports talk radio will get calls about why Belichick isn't being considered for coach of the year.

Alright, look, I'm sick of this. Enough.

Yeah, this is to you, Red Sox fans in Boston, and the rest of the 351 cities and towns of Massachusetts. Not to mention the rest of New England, the US, and the world. I'm sick and tired of hearing how devastated you are that the Red Sox failed to sign Mark Teixeira, and how it's even worse that he went to the Yankees. Stop it. Stop your whining, your hand-wringing. Stop crying in your egg-nog. Pull out your World Series DVDs, pop them in, then throw on a santa hat and spend some time with your family. It's Christmas, for Christ's sake!

Seriously, can anyone tell me stats on Teixeira? What did he hit last year? Year before? How many home runs? I'm not going to say he's not a very, very good ballplayer, or that the Red Sox don't need him. Think of how scary the Sox lineup would be with him:

1. Ellsbury
2. Pedroia
3. Youkilis
4. Ortiz/Teixeira
5. Teixeira/Lowell (there's no guarantee they'd have traded Lowell and not Ortiz)
6. Drew
7. Bay
8. Lowrie/auto-out
9. auto-out

Not too shabby.

Here's the thing, though - remove Teixeira, and you have:

1. Ellsbury
2. Pedroia
3. Youkilis
4. Ortiz
5. Lowell
6. Drew
7. Bay
8. Lowrie/auto-out
9. auto-out

Really, not much worse. Virtually the same line-up that came up just short of making the World Series this past year, even with an injured Lowell, and a banged-up Ortiz, Youk, and Lowrie. Hard to see much of the problem there. 

Let's see if I can put this another way. Let's go back to the 2003 offseason. Who would you rather have, Alex Rodriguez, or Nomar? Nomar's production had slid, most claimed he wasn't the same after his wrist injury, and many argued he was injury-prone. You'd probably want ARod. Let's take it a step further. ARod or Orlando Cabrera? Did you Red Sox fans even know who Orlando Cabrera was before 2004? I would doubt it. You'd take ARod in a heartbeat. Far better offensively, far better defensively. The Red Sox tried to get him, couldn't and settled for starting the year with Nomar, and finishing it with Cabrera.

It was a similar situation. The Sox wanted to make a trade with the Rangers. Essentially, the Sox would lose Nomar and Manny, and pick up ARod and Magglio Ordoñez, beefing up their defense, while not hurting their offense. They wanted ARod to take a pay cut. ARod was willing, but the union nixed the deal. Steinbrenner said, "We'll pay full price," and the Yankees swooped in and snatched what would have been the Red Sox's prizes off-season acquisition.

Red Sox fans were heartbroken. The Yankees had done it to us again. Aaron Boone drove a stake into our chests in the '03 postseason, and his replacement was pounding it in further. Fans and analysts predicted doom and gloom for the Sox, while trumpeting the move as the one that would return the Yanks to glory.

Might have all been a bit premature.

Since then, the Bronx Bombers have only sniffed the World Series once, and haven't even been back to the ALCS since 2004. Meanwhile, the Red Sox, feeling like they got snaked on that deal, dejected, abused, losers yet again, have won 2 of the last 5 titles, and have been to the ALCS 3 times.

Would the Red Sox have been better in 2004 with ARod? Maybe, maybe not. That's not the point, though. The point is that everyone thought the Sox blew it, that the Yankees were winners once again. It didn't work out that way. So, why is everyone so positive this will?

The Red Sox made a couple of large offers that Teixeira turned down. He ended up going to New York for about 1 million dollars more per year (that's less than his agent makes per year off the contract). Could it be that he just didn't want to come to Boston? The Sox could have upped the offer, but you have to believe that they looked at what they already had, and said, "it's not worth breaking the bank to go after this guy who is going to throw our clubhouse into such disarray. We made a competitive offer, if he gets more money elsewhere, so be it." I'm not sure how you can fault them on that.

And can we please drop this whole "The Yankees are trying to buy another championship/evil empire" crap? Look back at the start of this current Yankees dynasty - mostly home-grown players (just for kicks, take a look at the 2004 Red Sox and try to count the home-grown players on the playoff roster...3, I think?). Yes, they spend money. Yes, they spend more money than anyone. They also have more money than just about anyone, and are willing to spend it in order to win. The horror!

Let me tell you something - that is not evil. Go ask a Twins fan about that. Their owner is one of the wealthiest in baseball, and yet, they can't hold on to players because they can't afford them...something doesn't had up there. Or Expos fans about Jeffry Loria. Yeah, those guys are closer to evil than an ownership willing to spend a little money.

Basically, this all comes down to the fact that it was the Yankees that signed him. Had it been any other team in MLB, Sox fans would have shrugged it off and focused on who is going to be catching next year. (Want to talk about holes in the lineup? As of right now, the Red Sox have no catcher. Literally. No one. Might be something worth looking into.) Instead, the Yankees got him, and suddenly, "That's the guy we had to have!" 

Uh, no. It's a guy we'd have liked to have. The Red Sox made an attempt, and didn't get him. They will move on, and so should we. Really. Drop it, and have a Merry Christmas.

A Revision, Perhaps

I've been told, quite adamantly in a couple of cases, that I shouldn't give up on Gentle Art. So, perhaps I should revise my last post, and say that I am taking a hiatus from posting for a while, after which I will try to post more regularly.

Is Anyone Reading This?

Probably not.

Can't say I blame you. Between my infrequent posts, and the majority of my posts being about nothing in particular, I don't see why anyone would be checking this blog with any sort of regularity.

As I see it, there are two options in front of me:

1. Post more often
2. Give up

The first option may work. I enjoy writing, and there is plenty of stuff going on in the world and in my life that I could post about.

However, does the world need yet another opinion on the news of the day? There are about 15 million other people who would be blogging about the same things as me, so what's the point? Especially since many of them do it better than I ever could. As for stuff going on in my life, well, I can see more of a point in blogging about the same thing as 15 million other people than about things that only affect myself or my dull life (or lack thereof). Nothing I have to say is all that important.

So, I think I'm going to go with option 2. I'm giving up. My blogging experiment has failed. I'm pulling the plug.

The Gentle Art of Making Enemies is a song on Faith No More's "King For a Day, Fool For a Lifetime" (I would recommend the album; It's a solid rock album from the mid-90's, though nothing like the song "Epic", which was their big hit). It is no longer an active blog.

The Gentle Art of Making Enemies is closed.

How Do I Reach These Kids?: The 2007-08 Quote Book

Howdy sports fans, welcome back to the off-season. Congratulations to Boston College for bringing the NCAA title back East. Hopefully UNH can do that one of these years (not that I'm holding my breath, or anything :( ).

Anyway, the end of the season brings many things, one of which is the highly-anticipated posting of that document which has thrilled and entertained litterally 10's of people over the past 7 years - the annual Quote Book!

This year, the quotes are a little sparse, in part because many of the regular Hosers were not very regular (a couple of long road trips, coupled with nasty storms - not to mention the gestation of the littlest hoser - kept our crowd light at times), but also because I took over full-time cowbell duties, which didn't leave me much time to record quotes, but here they are, in all of their minimalistic, out-of-context glory:

Hoserfest '07
“How'd you stay up when you were on top of me?” -Nick

Erinn: It's not as easy as it looks.
Matt: Just like Darci

11/2 UNH @ NU
Matt: go sparkly!
Darci: you gotta shake your sparkly. I'll sparkly your 23 for you.
Matt: you can sparkly anything of mine you want.

Darci: uh, JVR, you need the puck to score.
Matt: no, he just needs a bunny.

11/9 UML @ UNH
Darci: Foster's ready for the motorboat.

11/10 BC @ UNH
Doug: Rob, if she doesn't break up with you by the end of the game, we've failed you as friends and brothers.

11/24 Brown @ UNH
Darci (plays a 7): seven.
Matt (plays an ace): eleven...or, eight.

“Just because Darci's flat, and has holes, it doesn't mean she's a cribbage board.” -Doug

“Well, we better go set up our booth before Shrek and Fiona get here.” -Scott

11/30 UML @ UNH
"I think my pants are too tight to tuck my shirt in. Though they're looser now, since I went to the bathroom." -Darci

12/01 UNH @ UML
"Tell her she can sleep with the floor on shrader." -Jay

12/29 UNH @ UND
UND fan: You know, the NCAA doesn't allow cowbells during play.
Jeff: Since when do you care what the NCAA thinks?

UND fan: UNH sucks!
Scott: Look at your 10 million dollar scoreboard!

1/4/08 UNH @ UMass
"I outsmarted a dog! Yes!" -Rob

2/8/08 UNH @ Maine
"His is really wide." -Darci

"Others just blow." -Scott

Mike: That explains the roofie in the bottom.
Jeff: A roofie? That's optimistic.

2/16 PC @ UNH
"This is why we can't have nice things." -Rob

3/15 UMass @ UNH
Darci: You jabbed me in the neck.
Jay: Well, where am I supposed to jab you?

"Oh no, it's all floppy." -Jay

4/9/08 Frozen Four Wednesday
"I hate extra-small. I can't get my hand in there." -Jay

"I can't do it if you make me laugh." -Darci

"I got messy. White stuff all over my hand." -Darci

"I just wanted Matt to feel left-in." -shrader

"Shouldn't he be bleeding somewhere?" –Greg

"Come over and make me bleed." -shrader's text to Greg (sort of)

4/10 Frozen Four Thursday
"Around the cone come the Weiners!" -rink announcer

4/11 Frozen Four Friday
"No, don't take my cherry!" -Darci

“What what?” –various

“3uck you!” -various

"I like violation, but this is ridiculous!" –Jenna

4/12 Frozen Four Saturday
“That is a racist call!” –The Darkness

And there you have it. Another year come and another year gone. This was a fun season, with a lot of laughs, and probably a lot more quotes that could have made it in here. I hope you all have enjoyed it.

It's been a long season...

It’s been a long season, one that I am ready to see march off into the darkness of memory, to not be thought of again until next August, when we are mired in the sticky heat of yet another New England summer, and look forward with renewed hope and optimism toward the changing of the seasons and the first drop of the puck.

It’s been a long season, and at times a strange one. We watched as UNH dropped yet another exhibition game to a Canadian university, then sweep a highly-regarded Colorado College team at the Whit. We saw a game at BU that opened our Hockey East play and featured the prettiest goal of the season from the #2 overall draft pick, James vanRiemsdyk. We saw Northeastern and UMass climb to the top of the standings, the NU Huskies beating UNH twice on our own ice. BC players were dropping like flies. BU looked talented but disjointed (and had no goalie). UNH split the season series with Lowell. UNH swept the season series against Maine, BU, and BC, something that has never happened before.

It’s been a long season, featuring long road trips, as many seasons do, but none quite like this year. We followed the team to North Dakota, flying out to Minneapolis, and driving up to Grand Forks. We spent one night in North Dakota, watched two games, and came home. We drove through an ice storm to get to Burlington, then made the foolhardy decision to drive home that night instead of finding a cheap hotel room and waiting for the storm to pass and the roads to clear. We drove out to Orono, Maine, the godforsaken locale of our biggest rival – for a two game series, driving home after the second game in order to try and beat the winter storm that was approaching.

It’s been a long season, in which we learned a great many things. Coming back from the Maine trip we learned that deer like to congregate by the side of backwoods highways in the middle of snow storms. We also learned that my car can handle hitting a deer, at slow, non-lethal, speeds. We learned that Maine fans may hate us bitterly, but manage to show more class than Vermont fans, who hate us bitterly but have nothing to show for it. We learned that WCHA teams don’t shake hands after the first game of a 2-game series, and that the players’ parents can get quite enraged if you inform them that Hockey East follows a slightly different convention. We learned that our family-friendly women’s game cheering is vulgar. And that some of our fellow fans enjoy our rendition of “Oh Canada”. We’ve learned that certain of our friends are apparently a little crazy for Winnie the Pooh, or are determined to instill a deep-seated fear of the honey-loving bear and his friends in their soon-to-be-born child.

It’s been a long season, and one that ultimately ended, as so many of our seasons do in heartbreak and misery, but not necessarily just because of the results on the ice. Watching BC come back from a 4-1 deficit to knock us out of the Hockey East tournament was painful, as was the following Friday, watching the last at-large bid in the tournament beating UNH at their own game, playing an opportunistic, high-scoring game and sending the team home early once again, but this pain is more about the team, more external. There was also personal heartbreak and pain, internal, private, sometimes unseen by anyone other than those who felt it.

And that is why I will be glad to see this season end. Yes, we can look back on the great games, like coming from behind to beat North Dakota on their own ice or sweeping Maine at the Alfond; or the high points, like surviving the drives through multiple snowstorms, or simply getting to see games in North Dakota’s epic Ralph Englestadt Arena. And yes, we can look back and say it was a pretty good, fairly enjoyable season, overall, but the low moments – the stress, the anguish, the illnesses, the heartache – they all overshadow the high points, and the more the hockey season lingers, the more I am in this world, the more those thoughts stay fresh in my mind. I love The Hosers, and come August I will be excited to see them again, but for my own state of mind, I need to not see them for a while, to take a break from certain thoughts that hound me like vicious wolves, with blood-stained fangs waiting to tear into my soul and rend it to shreds.

I need some time away from everything, some time to settle my thoughts, straighten my head, so to speak. This season has taken its toll on me, but I think I can learn from my mistakes, be stronger next year, maybe not be so worn out that all I want to do is lie in bed and avoid all human contact.

It’s been a long season, and one I am ready to see end.

What the hell is Kolmogorov Complexity?

February is RPM month! I can hear you out there, “What the hell are you talking about?” Why, the RPM Challenge, of course! Record an album (10 songs or 35 minutes of music) in the month of February. It’s not a contest, just a challenge. And a lot of fun. I completed the challenge last year, and have been anxiously looking forward to it this year. And, as I did last year, I’ve decided to blog about my album, describing my thoughts on the project, and what it all means to me. Hopefully you listen to it and come away with your own feelings on each song – to that end, I would suggest you listen to the songs before reading about them, so that my explanations don’t influence your listening.

You can listen to the entire album for free, right here.

First off, the name. Broken Robot Factory. Where’d that come from? Well, last year, I recorded for the RPM Challenge as P, as that is the simplest of my various nickname, and I thought it would be somewhat unique. Yeah, not so much. It was fine for the challenge, but after I was done, and tried to upload my music, I ran into a slight problem. It seems that about 15 years ago, some loser named Johnny Depp teamed up with a musician or two and started a band. A band called P. Why anyone in their right mind would call a band P is beyond me. Regardless, I had to change my artist name.

Now, my original album title last year was “A Broken Row-bot Rows in Circles”, because I liked the row-bot/robot pun, and I had envisioned the album cover as a drawing of a row boat in a lake, with a robot bolted to the bottom. Instead of arms, the robot would have oars, one of which would be broken off and missing (probably floating in the water), and the robot obviously continuing to row, but in circles. I scrapped the idea when I realized it would take too long to draw it the way I wanted to, and that the whole concept was a little too emo, even for me. I went with the title “When Robots Dream”, and used a picture of Darci for the cover, even though she’s not a robot (robots are cold, calculating, emotionless…so wait, are we sure she’s not a robot? Programmed to love waterskiing, hockey, and to break men’s hearts? Hmmm…I’ll save that for a later post).

I am also a huge Futurama fan (as it is the greatest show featuring robots EVER – narrowly edging out Small Wonder*), and the RPM Challenge reminded me of the episode in which Bender gets sliced up by the can opener, and ends up going on tour with Beck (the fact that it was probably on twice during the Challenge helped, too). In that episode, Bender writes a song for all of the other broken robots who have been inspired by his success. After he meets them, they are pushed into a factory.

So, I combined my broken robot idea with the factory from Futurama, and came up with Broken Robot Factory. And now you know. Be careful what you do with this knowledge. On to this year’s album.

In response to my post about last year’s album, Erinn suggested I write lyrics next year. I decided she was right, and that I should try lyrics. Over the rest of the year, I messed around with my guitar, coming up with the fundamentals of a few songs, writing some lyrics. I planned on doing something rather different this year – instead of going the straight techno route I went last year, I wanted to go with more live instruments, play guitar, piano, sing, maybe some live drums, then use audio software to piece it all together. As February approached, and the sign-ups for RPM ’08 were announced, I started messing around in GarageBand at work, and came up with a couple of ideas that I really liked. So, I decided I would do two albums this year – one of techno that I could make in spare time at work, and one of live instruments, which I would record at home.

One problem with this idea – the live instrument stuff just wasn’t all that good, and I was absolutely loving the techno I was working on. So, I scrapped the live instrument idea. Contrary to what I thought would happen if I couldn’t pull it off, I really don’t feel that badly about it. I recorded 8 tracks for it, about 20 minutes of music (RPM requirement is 10 tracks or 35 minutes), and 9 for the techno album. I look at it as recording 17 tracks for the challenge, and using the 10 best (and yes, if you do the quick math, you’ll see that one of the “live instrument” songs is on the techno album – I’ll explain later).

The album is called Kolmogorov Complexity. Seems kinda random, huh? Well, that’s because it is. A fellow RPMer posted the idea of clicking the “Random Article” link in Wikipedia to get band/album/song titles. I tried it out, hit that, and really liked it. It is a term used in computer science and is the measure of the computational resources needed to specify the object. The fact that it is used in computer science relates to the fact that my music is computer-based, and it’s meaning relates very well to my album art, which is illustrations my grandfather did in NASA’s Gemini program familiarization manual in which he drew certain parts of the space suits, and labeled them – the goal being to fully describe the part, using as few labels as possible.

Now, the music. A couple of things to note. One of my goals this year was to use as few pre-recorded loops as possible. That said, I’m not a drummer in any way, shape or form. I am pretty awful at even writing drum loops. So, nearly all of the percussion heard is pre-recorded loop. Other than that, though, nearly every loop on this album is written and assembled by me.

Another goal was to write music based on a certain key/scale, instead of just haphazardly slapping notes into loops and hoping it sounds good. I had to refresh myself a bit on chords and scales, but there are some excellent resources on that inter-web thingy.

And lastly, this album is best listened to, in my opinion, on a really good set of headphones.

1. Numinous

The second song I wrote and recorded this year.

GarageBand has a feature called “Musical Typing” which allows you to use the computer keyboard as a musical keyboard in order to input music. Because of this, you can type words, and play music. I decided to use the phrase “Why do I always” which was the beginning of a longer sentence that I don’t recall at the moment. I’m sure it had to do with a girl. Anyway, the way the keyboard is set up, the home row is the white keys, the row above are the black keys. “I” is not actually a key, so the riff became “whydo always” which I trimmed down to “w-h-y d-o a-l w-a-y” (C#-A-G# E-C#(up one octave) C-D(up one octave)-C# C-G#) because it flowed better. That is the main riff in the song. It’s not in any specific key, and as such, it’s fairly dischordant. I like the dischordant sound of the riff, though. It really works for this song, especially as the song progresses and breaks down into static and distortion.

The inspiration for the song came from when I put together Delta Lyrae – what if I just had one riff, and tweaked it with filters and effects enough to make it sound like various different riffs/sounds? This song is just that one riff (until the coda). Even the drums are the same riff (think of those Casio keyboards you see in electronics stores that have percussion mapped to keys – same thing in GarageBand), though I did modify them a bit, adding a hi-hat ride here and there to fill the song a bit more. And everything gets filtered and effected until they sound harsh and disjointed and eventually fall apart, held together only by the tenuous drum beat and the faint piano. Then the piano comes up to full volume, closing out the piece with a brooding coda.

The name comes from wikipedia, another random article title. “Numinous” is a term used by some philosophers to describe that which is wholly other, as in “not of this world” (so, like ghosts, or deities, or Sidney Crosby). It really fit this song, as it is kind of eerie and atmospheric.

2. Making History

Ok, so as noted above, I wanted to try to write music based on a certain key/scale, instead of just haphazardly slapping notes into loops and hoping it sounds good. This was my first real attempt. I wrote the song using GarageBand’s sheet music feature (just like it sounds – you add notes to sheet music) using chords from the D Major scale, and a rather simple chord progression. The plan was to convert it from the defailt grand piano to a synth of some sort, but I found that as I tried to do that, nothing sounded as good as the piano. So I left it, thinking I could add synths around it. The only thing that sounded right was the string ensemble. There are synths deep in the background, but they are faint. So, it seems that in the middle of my attempts to make a techno album, I wrote a short piece of chamber music. Fits nicely after the piano finish to Numinous.

The title is yet another wikipedia random article. I think it fits, as the song has a “classical” sound to it.

3. Delta Lyrae

This is the first song I wrote, and the only song with pre-recorded loops. There are three fairly distinct sections of the song (after the intro), each one based on a certain loop, which I then modified with filters and effects. In the first version of the song, the sections were very distinct. As I listened, though, I decided they needed to overlap, more. If you listen closely, you can hear the synth loop from the final third during the first, and the synth from the first helping to bridge the second and the third. Also, perhaps more surprisingly, the synth loop that starts the song is the same as the one that finishes out the song, even though they sound drastically different.

The name comes from the name of a binary star in the Lyra constellation. Binaries tend to orbit each other, one’s gravity influencing the other, their light mixing and deflecting off of each other, much in the same way the various loops in this song revolve around one another, each altering the other’s sound. (And yes, this was yet another random Wiki article.)

4. Mysterium Fascinans

Sometimes, I start off by playing around on the guitar, coming up with a riff. This year was a little different, as I was trying to write stuff for the guitar, but sometimes what I came up with worked better on the computer than on the guitar. This is one of those cases.

Well, sort of.

The guitar riff this song is based on is actually really fast, and played really high on the fretboard. When I recorded it into GarageBand, I didn’t like it. It was too high-pitched and too fast. It sounded like something you’d hear in a crappy rave, and I wanted to stay away from those kinds of sounds. So, I slowed it down, dropped it an octave, and really liked it. I kept the BPM of this song up (142), and used a quick drumbeat and some other instruments (including my very own “chop synth” – inspired by the sounds near the end of Numinous) to build a fast/slow counterpoint structure, which I think gives this song great flow – you have the slow, swelling synths setting an ominous mood, then the faster distorted synths and filtered drums giving a frenetic feel. I really like the way they play off each other. It’s mysterious, and fascinating.

And hey, that’s kinda like the track title, isn’t it? Yes, if you hadn’t guessed, the title is Latin for “fascinating mystery”, and is part of a longer term (see track 8), related to the term numinous. The “fearful and fascinating mystery” is the term used to describe that feeling you get that there’s something else here; like when you’re in an old, spooky house all by yourself late at night, and you get the sense there is something else there…

5. Breaking History

So, I have this piece of quasi-chamber music on an album of techno. What to do? What to do?

Break it!

This is probably the song most hurt by the time limitations imposed both by the challenge and by my attempting to do this all at work. The idea was to take Making History and just destroy it. I like what came out, but I think I could go further. I guess destroying history further is something to do in the future.

6. Galactagogue

The neatest thing about this song is the percussion line that starts it off (and then carries through the song). Is it some sort of digital drum machine sound? Nope. It’s a fellow RPMer banging on pots and pans and other things in his kitchen. He recorded a bunch of sounds, then put it up online for anyone to use. I took some of the sounds, built a pretty simple drumline, then effected and filtered it to get the distorted percussion sound.

The melody is based on a very simple downward progression of the root note of a C major chord.

The title…well, I’d suggest you go to wikipedia (yes, another wiki-inspired title) and look it up yourself. Then, after your initial shock, look up the word “galaxy”. If this song actually works as a galactagogue, I need to know. Seriously.

7. In The Right Light

If this isn’t the prettiest song I’ve ever written, then that honor would have to go to Empty, at the end of this album.

This is a song I wrote on the Yamaha electric piano for the live-instrument album. Yes, that is me playing an actual piano. When I scrapped that album, this was one of the songs that I really liked, and I thought it would fit on this album. I inserted some synth textures under the piano, but thought it needed something more. Then it hit me: Crickets.

Crickets?

Crickets!

I found a sample of “summer insect sounds” (specifically “Night, Crickets, Frogs”) and inserted it under the piano. I think it really makes the song, turning it from a nice piano piece to a song that recalls warm summer nights, sitting out on the porch, looking up at the stars with someone you love as the rest of the world moves on.

The title comes from the quote “In the right light, at the right time, everything is extraordinary”.

8. Mysterium Tremendum (et Fascinans)

Ah, the fearful and fascinating mystery. This is basically the same song as Mysterium Fascinans, just slowed down from 142 BPM to 80 BPM. Some of the loops were tweaked a bit (the drums start later, for one), but the biggest change is really just the tempo. I like the way slowing it down opens up the song, drawing out the slower loops and emphasizing the choppiness of some of the faster ones.

9. Mo Chroi, Mo Chuisle

Someone reading this may know how to pronounce this song title, but I’m going to guess that 99% of you do not. That’s ok – it’s Irish Gaelic. I needed to hear audio samples to be able to say it.

And, if you followed that link, you’ve seen that the title translates to “My Heart, My Pulse”. Listening to the song, and hearing the “heart-beat” drum line (actually a drum loop filtered so heavily that only the first double beat is audible), the title makes sense, but why the Gaelic?

Well, I’ve long had a fascination with Ireland, Irish beer (Go Guiness!), Irish women, and this song sort of reminds me of the way my heart beats when I’m around an Irish girl. It’s beating normally, then goes a little nuts when she talks to me, then flatlines as she talks about dating some other guy, then comes back rapidly as you realize you misunderstood, goes a little crazy again as you think she might be talking about you, then fades out again when you realize she doesn’t mean you. And then, after all that, when you think it’s dead, it’s still there. It will come back.

Or, maybe this is the song I wrote after Empty, and is supposed to be dischordant and non-melodic to symbolize my anger and frustration.

The reality is closer to a combination of the two.

10. Empty

This was written February 13^th. I’ll give you three guesses as to what was on my mind, and you won’t need the 2^nd or 3^rd ones.

This is one of my favorite songs on this album, and probably the prettiest song I’ve ever written. And it took me 30 minutes to write. I recorded this song on my lunch break. The hardest part was naming it (this is the only song I named with no help from the internet).

It’s a very simple song. It’s piano, texture, and kick drum. The texture is actually a sample of a rain stick (long hollow tube with a bunch of rice inside; when you tilt it vertically, the rice trickles down, sounding like rain).

The piano starts off with a pulsing D minor, then shifts as the root note walks around a bit. I’m sure there’s some technical terms for all of this, but I don’t know any of them. As the song progresses, the rain stick texture shifts and twists until it becomes a swirling vortex of sound. As this happens, the piano melody comes in, mimicking the chords, but in reverse (a counter-point, of sorts, I suppose). A single kick drum keeps the beat (slowly).

There’s a harshness to the texture that mixes with the relentlessness of the piano chords and the lightness of the melody. All of this combined with the minor key of the song makes it very pretty, but also very sad. The slow, single-note melody adds to this, I think, a cold, lonely sound.

It is my Valentine’s Day song. It is my prettiest song. It is my saddest song. And, I think it’s fairly obvious why it’s called “empty”.

*That’s right, Trekkies, I put Small Wonder ahead of any of the Star Trek series.

Small fucking Wonder.

Suck it.

It's been 12 hours, and I'm still pissed.

Ok, look, I understand the desire to be at every single UNH game possible. I understand the desire to yell at the team, or at fans who won't stand up late in a close game. However, there is a limit. If you are 4+ hours away, and rushing back would only get you home in time for the last 15 minutes of the game, just go straight home. Forget about going to the game. Especially if you are going to come to the game and then complain about everything.

Yes, I am citing a specific reference. Last night. Northeastern @ UNH. Two of our fellow fans (though not hosers - these two sit in the next section over, in the corner) miss the first period. Then the second period. Then the start of the third. They finally show up after missing 3/4 of the game. And y'know, that's ok. Tickets are already paid for, might as well use them, even though you're probably going to have to stand in the concourse and watch. For whatver reason, these two were actually able to get their seats in the front row. I don't know if this was because their friends save those seats for them, or if the fact that they always sit there led other people to believe that no one else was allowed to sit there, but either way, the seats were open, and they took them without even recognizing how fortunate they were. They acted as if they were entitled to sit there, as if they had paid for those seats. I know the hosers sometimes act like this, but then, we also get to the rink 2-3 hours before the doors open to rush down for our seats.

And then comes the complaining. UNH wasn't playing very well. These two start shouting how they didn't drive all the way from New York to see UNH play like crap. Was UNH playing great? No. Were they playing terribly? No. They were playing ok, NU was playing better, and was doing a lot of things to disrupt UNH. Games like this happen. It's not the end of the world. Coach will make them skate harder in practice, and hopefully teach them how to counteract some of the things NU did against them. To these two, though, it was a personal slight that UNH was playing poorly.

With about 4 minutes left, the "townies" started to head to the exits, and these two start yelling at them for leaving early, and about how they drove so far to be there, etc. Yeah, none of the townies care what you two did, and you are probably a big reason they don't like us (since you two tend to yell at them every single game, while sounding like idiots).

And the topper. The comment that made me want to tell them to shut the hell up and go home. One of them asks us to put on the white board "we didn't drive [however far] to have our hearts broken". And then she went on about not spending hundreds of dollars to have their hearts broken.

What?? IT'S FUCKING NOVEMBER 3rd!! UNH lost 2-1. TWO to ONE. If a 2-1 loss in November breaks your heart, go the fuck home, save your money, and spend your winters watching crappy TV shows. Don't go to hockey games where your team might actually lose. Because guess what, it's going to happen, regardless over whether you're there or not. And that whole "We paid good money for these seats, play down here!" crap you yell? Yeah, that's just fucking ridiculous. Ok, it was kinda funny the first time you shouted it, but it's gotten old. People on the other end paid good money. The people at center ice paid good money. What they fuck makes YOU so special that you being there means they should play in front of you? Yeah, I get the point of the "cheer" - you want them to play in the offensive zone. However, when you shout that, you sound like a self-important nitwit...which I guess is pretty close to the truth.

Ugh.

Blogger's Block

Ok, so I haven't posted for a while, and for that, I apologize. I simply haven't had much to write about. Not too many exciting happenings in my life at the moment, and those that were noteworthy were really only of interest to people present at the time. Hoserfest was awesome, and a big thanks to Darci and her family for hosting us all.

So...what to write about? What to write...well, I could check my e-mail. Maybe there's something interesting in there.

Let's see, 2,178 messages...and nothing from my readers. Reader. Singular. Beyond that, nothing even worth talking about.

Well, there was this one, from mpo_sekretariat:

qwty pajchvvtba usyn jhkiho jwxuvb pajoya

I am...unsure what that means. However, if you note the usage of the non-specific, partial, non-selective deictic "usyn", followed by the third-person singular verb in the genitive case, with no proclitic, "jhkiho", as well as the overall subjunctive mood, you'll realize that I have no idea what I'm talking about and am just throwing out grammatical terms. And that I just wanted to use the term "proclitic".

I thought about using this space to outlay some of my feelings on Barry Bonds, as he has recently broken Hank Aaron's record, but after the google search, "Barry Bonds" +blog yielded 11,700,000 results, I figured I'd probably be echoing a few million other blogger's comments, so I think I'll leave that one alone.

I got a Wii recently. It's fun. Lot's of blue LEDs. Blue LEDs are neat. I got nothing.

Back to sports, the Red Sox lead is down to 5 games (at the time of writing), and I've been hearing about Red Sox fans "panicking"...um, why? Yeah, I understand how much it would suck to lose this division to a team that at one point was battling Tampa Bay for 4th place, but what is the sense in panicking? What are we going to change by flipping out and symbolically "leaping off the Tobin Bridge"? Especially given the fact that the Sox haven't lost anything yet...sometimes I think this region is just a little too crazy about baseball.

And speaking of crazy, check out Stranger Than Fiction (2006). Great, subtle performance by Will Farrell. Don't expect anything like his other comedy roles. Best Will Farrell movie I've seen since...um...

Right, so when I was cleaning my apartment recently, I found a piece of folded up notebook paper. Upon unfolding, I found a woman's handwriting. Now I'm really intrgued. Reading down the page, my heart races, my breath quickens, and my legs go a little weak. Do you know what I'm holding in my hand? Quotes that never made the quote book page...I found the lost quotes!

1.13.07 UNH vs Dartmouth
Gibber: That tickles me in my...tickle spots.

Darci: Nothing like sharing a fruit roll-up in a car.
Gibber: Doesn't get more romantic than that.

Gibber: I need to lose about 400lbs.
Gib's Mom: Cut your head off.

Gibber: It was a very eventful ride, topped off by my mom.

Gibber: He turns Friday on the 30.


Check back in a week for a new post. There probably won't be one, but it doesn't hurt to check, right?

I couldn't think up a clever title...

...so there isn't one. Here's some things that I've been thinking about lately:

• Monday morning (see last post) went something like this: I get to work early, to be sure to be there when my coworker saw her cube. I hear her come in, put her stuff down in her cube and stand there, looking at everything. The next sound I hear is paper tearing and being tossed into the garbage can. She was not amused. She was less amused when she turned her computer on, and saw the desktop backgrounds. And, she was even less amused by the screen saver. I was thoroughly amused as she kept finding Yankees things around her cube.
  
  She swears that she'll get me back. Joke's on her, though (again) - I won't be able to take a vacation until September. That's what she gets for being a Yankees fan.


• I don't understand why the NHL has such a problem marketing the league. It's so simple and obvious it is stunning. You have these players, a ton of whom have magnificent stories to be shared with the public. And, you have a huge hockey fan in Kiefer Sutherland with star power and one of the coolest voices on TV. You could have him read a story about how Andrew Alberts rode the T down Comm Ave one day to pick up some burgers at McDonald's, and it would sound like the opening narration to some ultra-dramatic movie. Take a bunch of these guys, write down their stories, have Kiefer read them during NHL commercials. People will be salivating to watch the NHL.
  
  Of course, knowing the NHL, they'd do this, but only air them once a week. On Versus.


• I've been noticing a disturbing trend lately. More and more, I've been seeing or been told about kids who look like me. I drove past a kid, probably in high school, husky, with a scruffy beard and pony tail. Yeah, parents? A word of advice - DON'T LET YOUR KIDS LOOK LIKE ME. Do whatever you have to. Buy a treadmill and pay them to use it. Force them to eat healthy in exchange for growing their hair out. Save your kids.


• Who the hell came up with the Bagel Bites tagline, "When pizza's on a bagel, you can eat pizza anytime"? What the hell does that even mean? Have you ever been about to have leftover pizza for breakfast, and stopped, saying "geez, it's morning. I really shouldn't be having pizza. If only it was on a bagel!"? When can't you have pizza? And does this apply to religious people who fast for various reasons?
  
  "Hey, you can't eat that pizza! It's the middle of Ramadan!"
  "But it's on a bagel."
  "Oh, you can have that ANYtime!"
  
  Frankly, I think that would have been a better commercial than a bunch of punk kids running into the house and looking for a snack.


• Pulling out of the grocery store parking lot, I called one of the store employees a punk as he took his time walking the longest route possible in front of my car and gave me a defiant look, but I immediately felt bad. I meant to call him a douchebag.


• Apparently Tim Meadows's dad works at this grocery store. Either that, or Tim is prepping for an upcoming role as a grey-haired, mildly-depressed grocery store manager. I don't think either case bodes very well for Tim.


• Something I've never understood - the idea that if you're obsessed with something, you are likely to hurt it. Maybe it's just me, but I've never been in love with someone so much that I wanted them dead. Just kinda seems...counterintuitive.
  
  "Oh man, I love that car, but I can't afford it. I'm going to blow it up so that no one else can drive it."


• The past three weeks have been busy for me, as I've undertaken the mamoth task of cleaning my apartment. Not just picking up around the apartment - no, we're talking, full-on, root through every box, every drawer, every pile of papers, fill up multiple garbage bags, reorganize entire rooms, cleaning. It's rather exhausting, and has taken a bit longer than expected. Some of it has been rather interesting, though.
  
  I found my baby book (something I would strongly recommend all future parents do - record everything you can about your child, and keep it safe) and some papers from my early school years, and found some things out about myself:
  
  
  • Apparently when I was young, I had a fantastic attention span, and would remain focused on one thing for hours at a time (what the hell happened to that?)
  
  
  • I learned how to read before I started nursery school. Mom first noticed when I went through the crayon box and read all the names, and then was able to read other things. She credits Sesame Street. Because of this, I've come to the conclusion that all K-8 classes should be taught by muppets. I have never known anyone who was a devoted Sesame Street watcher who failed to learn something from that show. Hell, I'd have paid much more attention to Algebra in 8th grade had lightning flashed and the teacher laughed like The Count everytime he finished showing us a concept. Instead, he looked like a 40-year-old nerd. Didn't really inspire me to learn, y'know?
    
    And muppets don't run into the same problems as human teachers do. Kids will tune out a mid-30's blonde woman standing infront of the class, yammering on about the rhyming structure of a Robert Frost poem. Change that teacher to a 6-foot-tall talking shag carpet with ping-pong balls for eyes and no throat, and every single eye will be staring straight at it, taking everything in.
    
    And more and more lately, we've been hearing about sex scandals in schools, be it male teacher/female student, female teacher/male student, male teacher/male student, or even female teacher/female student. When was the last time you heard about a sex scandal involving a muppet? And I'll tell you, as students approach puberty, they start thinking about some of their teachers that way, and some of the TV stars they enjoyed as younger children. I've heard guys lust after Punky Brewster, and girls drool over Ricky Schroeder. However, you wil NEVER hear anyone say, "Man, that Big Bird was HOT!"
    
    (And yes, Darci, you'd still have a job - you took a puppeteering course at UNH, right?)
  
  
  • I wrote a "book" in the 2nd grade about hockey (if you're surprised, you don't know me well enough). I talked about playing anywhere the coach put me, and being put in net in the 2nd half of the season, where I helped my team make the playoffs. My goals in life at that time? Play goal for the US Olympic hockey team, then go play for the Boston Bruins. Yes, I wanted to be Jim Craig, even though I was too young to even know who he was. My favorite thing about the book? I dedicated it to Grant Fuhr - proving that I simply love hockey, as I dedicated my book about the sport to the man who helped destroy my dreams of ever seeing my favorite team hoist the holy grail that is the Stanley Cup.
  
  
  • In Kindergarten, I was apparently very good at approaching people and making friends, a skill that I unfortunately lost somewhere between then and the rest of my life. I was good at playing with others, but I also had a tendency to do things by myself. I would take a workbook and go do the exercises by myself, or just play by myself. Sadly, this is the skill I would nurture.
  
  
  • A few years later, I recognized this problem though, as I made two New Year's resolutions: the first, to draw more, because drawing is fun; the second, to make more friends because playing alone is no fun. Yeah, nailed that first one pretty solidly (just look at any of my notebooks from middle school on - all doodles, few notes). So, I'm shooting 50%. Hell, in Wayne Gretzky's best year, he only shot 27%. Suck it, "Great One"
  
  
  • In the third grade, I did a report on the extinction of the dinosaurs. The teacher loved my drawings, and praised my knowledge. Looking back through it, though, I have to think it's because she didn't know much about dinosaurs herself. I mean, my conclusions were ill-formed at best, and at times downright wrong. And the comet I drew? Holy crap. Looks like a deformed christmas cookie. I don't even know why I submitted it to the New England Scientific Journal. It needed at least one more draft.
  
  
  • Basically, my childhood revolved around reading, music, TV, and hockey. Man, have I changed! Oh wait, no, I haven't.
  
  
  • Oh, and I found a bunch of pictures of me from the late 80's/early 90's. I don't know if anyone picked up on this, but, um, I'm a pretty big dork. I don't think anyone but me thought what I was wearing looked cool at all. But hey, at least I tried to look cool...and holy crap did that ever fail miserably! At least I learned something from those pictures - in 15-20 years, I'll look back at pictures of me now, and I may still look like a dork, but at least I'll be ready for it!
  
  
• Current figures list the world population at 6.6 billion people, with about 4.7 billion adults. It's reasonable to assume that about half of the population is female (at birth it's a little less, by adulthood, it is about half). This means there are roughly 2.35 billion women who would not go out with me. The odds that anything I post here is about any specific woman are 1 in 2,350,000,000, or .0000000004255%. It's actually more likely that someday a scientist will clone a velociraptor that will break out of captivity, eating you and your entire family, and then star in an Andrew Lloyd Weber musical about the plight of migrant farm workers in Bolivia. To assume that anything I post here is about any single woman out of that 2.35 billion is rather ridiculous. *cough*pinheadnation*cough*


• At times, my friends and I like to rent crappy sci-fi/action/horror movies and rip them apart, MST3k-style. Sometimes it's tough to find the right movie, though. You pick one up, and it looks right, but then you pop it in, and you realize there's nothing you can do. I have found a sure-fire way to determine whether a movie is good for this treatment. Examine the front cover of the case. Do you see the words, "Christopher Lambert"? If so, then you have a winner.


• If I had a dollar for every time I made some shocking revelation like the fact that Christopher Lambert is married to Diane Lane (and has been since at least the early 90's)...I'd have a dollar.



• Some view the internet as a place to gather and share information. They are wrong. The internet is a place to troll message boards and gather/share pornography. Al Gore claims he invented the internet. I'm not sure if that's true. I mean, depravity and inflammatory comments - does that sound like a politician to you?

In closing, sad news from the entertainment world: Mr. Wizard passed away Tuesday morning, at age 89. In lieu of flowers, the family requests that you use a vacuum to make a ping-pong ball hover in mid-air.

Why I may not live to see lunch on Monday:

Yes, my dear reader(s), I am afraid for my life. Did I piss off some ultra-violent sociopath who has tracked me down and has been sending me death threats all weekend? Maybe, but that's not what this is about.

No, this is about a friend at work, Amy, who is likely to tear my larynx out with a staple remover when she comes into work Monday morning.

You see, Amy is a huge Red Sox fan. She goes to games, has a bunch of those jersey t-shirts, various superstitions regarding the wearing of said shirts and the outcomes of games, and, most importantly in terms of this post, a bunch of Red Sox stuff in her cube (including pictures, the NESN BobbleDesk, and desktop backgrounds).

To help you picture it, here's a picture (computer was off, though, so you'll have to take my word on the desktpo backgrounds):



And Monday morning, she left for Toronto with her boyfriend to go watch the Red Sox, and visit the Hockey Hall of Fame (mmmmmm HHOF...*drooooool* ...but I digress). She was gone all week. Her cube, full of Red Sox stuff, was just sitting there, empty, all week long.

I just couldn't resist.

It had to be done.

I converted her "Red Sox cube" to a "Yankees cube"!

I started downloading some images, and making some adjustments, and then I went to work on her cube. One of the bigger challenges was the BobbleDesk. I had to figure out the Yankees equivalent to Remy and Orsillo, which should have been the TV guys, but the headshots on the Yankees team page weren't in color for the TV guys, but they were for the radio crew of Suzyn Waldman and Jon Sterling. And, I figured they were a better choice, because while I love listening to Don and Jerry, Suzyn and Sterling make me want to gouge my eardrums out with a claw hammer. Here's how it came out:




Another problem was the Red Sox Trivia page-a-day calendar she has. It's May, so finding a 2007 calendar is a little difficult. I had hoped that I'd be able to find one cheap, but wasn't able to. So, I went into Adobe Illustrator, and created a page for a page-a-day calendar. It didn't come out quite the way I was hoping, but time was short. I'm pretty happy with how it came out, though:



Everything else was pretty easy. I covered her pictures of Nomar with a picture of ARod in some promo picture; her 2004 World Series champs mini poster was covered with a picture of a 1999 World Series champs plaque that you can buy; various Sox logos around the cube were covered with the Yankees logos; the Sox schedule replaced by a Yankees schedule. Her desktop backgrounds were replace with a picture of Jason Giambi and the Yankees logo. Her "picture frame" widget now cycles through Yankees pictures. Even her screen saver is now a slideshow of Yankees pictures.

Here's how her cube will look when she walks in Monday morning:



Yeah, she's gonna kill me.

It was worth it.

What now, chase the girl?

Ok, so if you've read any of my away messages lately, you've probably noticed that I'm kinda down, and that it's about a girl. Without going into too much detail, I met this girl some time ago, and we became friends. When I first met her, I thought she was pretty, but didn't think much else about her. The more I hung out with her, the more I realized that she is beautiful, especially her eyes - she has gorgeous eyes. I also discovered that she is intelligent, fun to hang out with, that we had a number of common interests, and (maybe most importantly) I really really liked the way I felt around her. She makes me feel happy. I find that no matter how crappy my day was, if I talk to her, I smile. A genuine, "I'm in a good mood" smile.

So, naturally, I start to think about being more than friends with this girl. This is where we run into problems. There has never been any indication that she'd want to go out with me, and when I think about the pairing we would be, I can't blame her. I'm not trying to be depressing here, but let's face it, I'm not exactly attractive. Honestly, and again, I say this without meaning to sound down, she can do much better than me.

There's also just the personalities involved. I think about dating this girl, and I can't imagine how going out on a date with her would be any different than just hanging out with her like I normally do. Now, some would say that's a good thing, but if that's all it's going to be, then what's the point of dating? Just stay friends. And then there's that - we are friends. I like being friends with her. Sure, you could look at dating her as a heightening of that friendship, but what then? Am I going to date this girl forever? Am I going to marry her? What I'm getting at here is that eventually, the relationship is going to end. It could end well, and we'd stay friends, or it could end messy, and we'd hate each other. I really don't want that.

And to that end, over the time I've known this girl, I've learned quite a few things about her, and while I think she is great as a friend, I'm not sure that she and I would work together as boyfriend and girlfriend.

So, all of this has weighed down on me the past few weeks (and maybe even longer), as I've tried to figure out what I'm feeling and what it means, and have tried to decide what to say to her, or if I should even say anything at all. At one point, I had decided to lay it all out, tell her everything, see what she thought of it all (possible awkwardness be damned), but I came to the conclusion that I already knew what her overall answer would be. So, I didn't say anything.

I think it was the right choice, but it was a hollow victory. I basically gave up on this girl who I couldn't stop thinking about. Now, all I could think about was how I'd never have her, which pretty much blows. It sucks to think she'll never go out with you. It just hurts to know it.

At some point over the past week, though, the thought occurred to me that my obsessing over her could stress our friendship. Would risking the friendship be worth all these feelings I was having? HELL NO! So, I began to understand that being "just friends" with this girl (as much as I hate that every potential relationship I have ends up like that, as my readers already know) is a very good thing, and much preferable to the alternative.

And, I figure it doesn't really change much of anything. I still have feelings for her that run deeper than friendship, but she doesn't share those feelings. So be it - I'm not going to dwell on it anymore.

So now, all I want is to be friends with her. And in that, I've already succeeded.

I am happy.


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