The Title of the Blog - Part 11

Hah! Found column #1. Turns out I had just mislabeled it as a second column 10.

So, here's the deal...

In the fall of my senior year, I took an English course called something like "Essay Writing". Sort of stupid to take that late in a college career, but it wasn't about writing a non-fiction essay for class, it was about writing a two-page essay just for the sake of writing an essay.

We read a bunch of essays in various styles and had to try on each of the styles. Maybe those will make up the next series of Saturday reads.

In one of the essays, we were to use a natural phenomenon as an analogy for some human phenomenon. I remember using the impending spring storms that I loved watching so much (and that I enjoy much less now that I'm a homeowner myself) as an analogy for falling in love.

This column echoes that essay rather strongly, and I'll have to admit that it's a little more poetic than the other columns that I wrote. I think, however, that I still really like it.

In case you were curious, I got an A- in the essay class, and my professor commented to me that my first drafts were probably the best in the class. He wished, however, that I would've turned in a few second drafts.

The smell of fire was on the air. So was that of rain. As often happens during this time of the year, the weather couldn’t make up its mind. Each morning of the weekend that just passed saw Crawfordsville wake up to a blanket of new fallen snow. Somewhere in the neighborhood behind the Lambda Chi house, a home was still clinging to these reminders and remainders of winter. The scent of their fire – warm, slightly acrid, and home – came to me through a window that I had thrown open in rejoice.

Spring was come at last. The sky held in its blue expanse promises of warmth, of rain, and of a few clouds. All usual suspects for an impending spring in the Midwest. I had my window open for the same reason I’d walked to campus without a jacket, for the same reason I had driven with the window down, for the hope of a spring newly born. Ready for that glorious rebirth that comes with the first thunderstorm and the first softball game of the year.

We were caught in the middle. The warm front – passing through and driving away dark clouds of winter- still lingered above our heads. Telling us our past and showing us our future. I saw them both but could find my place with neither one alone.

From the window of room 233 at Crawfordsville High School, I watched the rain roll in and then out. That’s Prue Phillips’s room and mine as well. I teach there from about 8:30 in the morning until about 2:40 in the afternoon. I don’t take classes at Wabash anymore. Teaching is my job, and Mrs. Phillips’s classroom is my classroom. I am now a student of students.

I am in my apprenticeship and must act as such. I wear slacks and shirts to my classes instead of jeans and sweatshirts. Not that I don’t wear those in my off hours, though.

Therein lies the analogy. I am not a suit. I’m not ready, damnit, to play real world, to be an adult, to apply for jobs. I still spend my weekends on college campuses either around or engaged in drunken frat boy activities. I’m still in school. I play practical jokes and revel in locker room humor that Wabash seemingly breeds. Hell, I’m not even old enough yet to drink legally.

But I feel a warm front coming through. Instead of my weather outlook being steady - college degree, calling for a rain of juvenile humor and a 50% chance of asinine amounts of alcohol-induced fog – the front is dragging with it a change of season. Welcome to the real world, baby. Hope you brought your umbrella.

But then again, it’s nothing more terrifying that the same thing we go up against every time our friends visit, every time we head home to see Mom and Dad, or ditch town to visit the girlfriend. Whenever we do that, we slip out of our Wabash mode – hide the beer cans behind the couch, pull the clean shirt off its hanger, and maybe even shower. We leave behind the person who attends Wabash, who works all week and drinks all weekend. And we slip into something more suited for the occasion. We become the Old High School Buddy, The Triumphant Son, or the Loyal Boyfriend. Each of these is just another mask we slip on and off as the situation suits us. Just this time, I’m not going to be able to change back.

And I’ll be honest; sometimes it scares the hell out of me. But my fear of the storm front that the winds of time are pushing towards us is nothing different from the same combination of the electric fear and excitement that hangs heavily in the air when a real storm is brewing, when the clouds are heavy with rain, and when the wind that whips the pines suddenly dies.

Actually, its more like the first time you were up to bat in little league. Sure, Dad had thrown pitches to you before, and you’d even smacked a couple of those things over the backyard fence. But that wasn’t this, and now you’re alone. Everybody’s pulling for you – your sister, your best friend, even your parents. They all want to see you do well, but they can’t help you anymore. Don’t worry, though, its not home run derby. You don’t have to make it all the way around on your first swing. Just keep your head down and your eyes on the ball. You’ll do okay…won’t you?

Sure you will. Because no matter how badly the doubts mount up sometimes, you’ll be ready to scream them back into whatever hole they came from. You’re a man, a Wabash man no less. Just because you’re not ready to grow up doesn’t mean you can’t. It just means that your storm front hasn’t moved all the way through yet. But it will, and you’ll be fine – nah, you’ll be wonderful.

Oh, but don’t forget your umbrella just in case rain comes down instead of sunshine.

Because we need more stupid

Have a little fun today with NetDisaster.com.

You get to choose from among a couple dozen means of destruction, any of which you are welcome to sic on your favorite or least favorite websites.

Have fun, welcome back to school, and Happy Lumberjack Day.

The best of the best of the lists for 2007

It's good to know that some people will filter down the detritus that is the web 2.0 and provide us with a list of the best of 2007 lists.

There's a whole lot of content here, and a bunch worth checking out.

Odds and sods

Just a quick few hitters today with brief comments on things that I'd seen here and there and just never worked into full posts...

• Meth House Nightmare - the crystal meth plague continues to get worse and worse, affecting not just the people who take the drug...don't know how we're going to cleanup the messes left behind - both the toxic waste dumps that are the sites of the meth labs and the disasters that the families and lives are turned into
• Streetcards Work for Portland - Cincinnati is in desperate need of some form of mass transit, and it looks like Streetcars are going to be the option...it's a start, and I hope it actually comes into being...I'll settle for a start from which we can build and expand
• Wordsmiths, Avoid These Words - A pretty anonymous university has come out with a list of overused words from 2007 - all of which I fully agree with. I'll have to check out decimate, because that's the only one of those that I use with any regularity.
• Congress Sends Bill Raising Fuel Efficiency Standards to Bush - Bush has signed the bill into law now, and the simple concept of raising the fuel efficiency to 35 mpg will do amazing things for us...2020 seems a long way off, and it's always possible that things can be changed before that, but here's to hoping that if they are, the mileage is ramped up even further...
• Bush tops 'most admired' poll - an odd thing to read considering his historically low job approval ratings
• Outsource Our Jails to Mexico - I love the willingness of our community newspaper to print just about any editorial. Free speech and freedom of the press doesn't always mean that the people have something revolutionary - or worthwhile - to say.

Looky at what I seen

the holiday break began with a viewing of I am Legend, the third attempt at adapting Richard Matheson's novella to the screen. I've seen a few clips of the Charlton Heston Omega Man version, and let me start by saying that Will Smith does a much stronger adaptation.

Admittedly, in talking to a friend who's read the source material, it appears that the screenwriters have taken a few significant liberties with the new script, leaving Will Smith a longer time alone to carry the film, but I was okay with that because - unlike Joey - I thought Smith managed to carry the film pretty successfully.

For those of you not aware, Smith plays the last man alive in Manhattan after a man-made plague runs rampant through the population, killing - as the film quotes - 90%; turning 9% into light-sensitive, flesh-eating beasts; and leaving 1% to attempt to survive. Smith manages to set himself up fairly well, carving a life with his canine companion and locking himself up drum tight when the darkseekers come out at night, working his ways through the alphabet of DVDs in the local store, and setting up mannequins to whom he carries on conversations.

Smith does a masterful job of showing the various emotions that a man in his state would likely have. His specific routines of a military man, designed for survival and to keep himself sane, are well shown from mornings on the treadmill and middays on Pier 13 and evening alarms set in time to get himself back home safe and sound before sundown. Smith also shows his science side as he continues to fight the good fight in attempting to cure the disease that man had created. And Smith shows the side of a man left alone, talking to inanimate objects, snapping at little noises, and missing his family horribly.

Smith's performance holds the film together, drawing the viewer in and allowing us to believe that he could be the kind of man who - if lucky enough to be flukishly immune - just might survive and continue to fight the good fight for a fair while.

The lone issue I had with the film was that the ending was a bit sudden. We get a solid bit of rising action, heading into the film's climax - which was pretty solid and dramatic. But the entirety of the falling action and dénouement took about two minutes - just a little too quick for my tastes.

---

I'd already checked out the first two volumes of Justice by Alex Ross, so when I saw the third sitting unwrapped on the shelves at Barnes & Noble, I thought I'd take a look through, see how Ross wrapped things up.

Quizk recap...

• first volume - good, neat idea, old-school SuperFriends vs Legion of Doom kinda thing
• second volume - kinda slow, dragged a bit

The third volume, then, redeemed the storyline as Ross tied things up well, turning the entire story into a pretty standard Brainiac controls Luthor to kill the world wrap-up. The artwork is impressive - as Ross's work always is, and the storytelling is good enough - not Ross's strongest suit, admittedly, but good enough. In the end, the storyline suffers from being derivative of the old Super Friends and newer Justice League Unlimited series.

It's a series worth flipping through - partially because it's purdy - but it's not one that I'd be likely to reread.

---

I'm all about the Fables series, and this spin-off is a nice change of pace from the ongoing thread of the main series. Instead of the lumbering of the battle between Fabletown and the Adversary, we get Jack being Jack.

In Jack of Hearts, the second collection of the series, we get Jack's trip to Vegas and subsequent smack down by the powers that be in Sin City. Of course, this being a Fables tale, those powers that be are a bit more magical that mafia in nature.

Admittedly, this tale lacks the gravity of the main narrative, but it is a fun read. And one review that I read does bring up a good point: Jack isn't a likeable rogue. He acts entirely on impulse, screwing over any mundy in his path. He doesn't treat the Fables in his way any better, and eventually a character to whom we can't relate at all is going to be hard to follow. Eventually we're going to need some sort of emotional connection if the series is going to have a character to follow for long.

In skimming through some info about Fables, I've gotten hints that the two series cross back together after a bit longer, so that might help. If Jack actually has to do something noble, we just might end up with a character that we can care about. If not, the tales will probably stay interesting for a while longer, but I doubt they'll stay that way forever.

---

To close out the holiday movie season, The Girl and I went for a bit of the gruesome and took in Sweeney Todd, the sixth Johnny Depp-Tim Burton joint.

I was a bit leery as the film began, it being an adaptation of Sondheim's musical, which meant I was looking at a whole lot of singing. Generally I'm okay with a musical in which there's normal acting interspersed with musicals. If, however, what would normally be the spoken words are instead sung - as are many of the lines in this film - I have been known to drift a bit. This film began the same way, with my eyes drifting shut a few times in the first few minutes.

Then the gore began.

And the gore built and continued. It's a gruesome film with blood pooring and pooling, spurting and spraying all over the place in a number of scenes. Blood pours from the throats of several of Todd's victims like a waterfall and spurts like a fountain from others. The film's gruesomeness doesn't stop with the killings, either, as the bodies are then dropped through a chute, typically landing with a sickly thud as their heads meet the stone basement three floors down before being chopped up and fed into the grinder and made into meat pies.

This film isn't one for the faint of heart or for the kids as the gore begins early and continues right through the even gorrier conclusion in which the Rosencrantz & Guildenstern truism holds and the bad end unhappily, the good unluckily.

A couple of reviews that I've read criticized the twin leads of Depp and Bonham Carter for having thin voices. Admittedly they probably wouldn't be the match of the finest voices of Broadway, but their performances held strong to the ears of the unlearned like me. They performed admirably and carried the film strongly, imbueing the film with Burton's requisite off-kilter relationship, summed up briliantly in Bonham Barter's daydream of the perfect life for the couple and their surrogate son. (Sadly no clip available on YouTube - though the scene is marvelously weird enough that this scene alone is well worth the price of admission.)

The film has been bounced around in a number of circles as one of the best of the year, and I think that's probably deserved. It's an excellent film with impressive performances, though it's not quite my cup of tea.

You certainly won't leave the theater happy and bouncy. Instead of a chipper, chattering crowd leaving the theater, our showing saw people stepping out in near silence. No "hey, how'd ya like it" or "man, I really liked that" - just silent wandering from the theater.

If you're looking for a happy ending, this isn't it.

---

Christmas night was spent in the Baxter Theaters in Louisville checking out an opening night-showing of Juno, another flick getting pretty strong reviews here at the end of the year.

The film's been mentioned in the same breath as Little Miss Sunshine, but the only similarities there are that both films are quirky and might be considered independent film, even though both have been distributed through pretty big movie houses. I couldn't stand Little Miss Sunshine and absolutely dug this flick, so I, of course, think the comparisons are pretty specious in my mind.

Juno is a beautiful, little film, and I don't mean that in an insulting way in the least. The film focuses on small things - no grand themes, no sweeping vistas - just a well-written tale of the relationships among a handful of people, one of whom finds herself dealing with - to paraphrase - things that should be way beyond her maturity level.

Ellen Page deserves all the kudos she's been receiving for her lead performance as the wise-cracking but wise-beyond-her-years lead character, handling the situation she finds herself in with aplomb (yeah, I'm working on raising my blog's reading level, shut up.) Her take on Juno holds the film together and lets it be okay that her parents, friends, adoptive parents-to-be, and friend/baby-daddy handle things in a way that's much more understanding than most anybody I can imagine in that situation.

From outstanding opening credit sequence through the note-perfect finale, the film never attempts to rise above the level of small, marvelous tale. It's impressively well-written, finely acted, and simply shot. It doesn't have the granduer and weight of an epic like There Will be Blood (high on my list to see when it shows in Cincy), or the gorgeous scenery of No Country for Old Men, but it's marvelous.

I do feel the need to mention the one issue that I had with the film, and it's the same one that I've had with the Gilmore Girls from time to time: the dialogue is a little too snappy, just a scosch too quick. I enjoy the snappy comebacks and fast pace of the patter between the characters, but I just might be a bit intimidated by people who could think this quickly and come up with turns of a phrase this impressive. It makes for an excellent movie, but some folks might think it a bit unlikely that real folks could be this witty.

---

Okay, quick hits through a bunch of stuff...

• Batman-Deathblow - hard to follow, artwork that doesn't distinguish the characters from each other, plot that bounces back and forth between past and present without nearly a clear enough distinction...overall grade: poor
• Catwoman: It's Only a Movie - good enough continuation of the series with the previously introduced Film Freak badguy...interesting enough, quick pacing...good but not special
• Daredevil: Hell to Pay - Daredevil's secret identity is compromised, his enemy knows his powers and uses them against him, the badguy plots to get to Daredevil through his family & friends...oh, the shock, the novelty...I've found the previous half dozen collections in this run to be a strong, solid, impressive run, but this one treads too much familiar, overdone ground for my tastes...here's to hoping that the new authors can find something new to say
• Y the Last Man: Unmanned - first volume in a series that many claim is the best running today...I didn't see that strength in the first volume which is pretty much all set-up...I'll give the subsequent volumes a try since PLCH has them, but I'm not convinced yet
• DMZ: Body of a Journalist and Public Works - impressive series following a journalist in a Manhattan that has withdrawn from the United States and finds itself as the neutral zone between the United States and the secessionist Free States...excellent tales of life in a war zone with the difficulties inherent...great commentary on our loss of freedoms as well as - in the third volume - the government's use of private contractors to rebuild within that war zone...comic book series as political commentary, but one willing to admit that the answers aren't entirely cut and dry...a series you should be reading
• Batman: Snow - surprsingly affecting tale going back to the early days of Batman retelling the origins of Mr. Freeze...neat, pretty artwork with a big use of pastels...neat, more interesting story is Batman's forming of a support team, trying to use civilians to help him on the job, behind the scenes...neat idea of the Bat trying a different way to get some help...I hope it stays as part of the canon because it's an interesting take on what he's done later with the various incarnations of the family
• Batman: Death and the City - the first collection of Paul Dini's Detective series left me unimpressed...this one's redemptive as Dini finds his form telling a few two-part tales, including a team-up with Zatana that works surprisingly well...hopefully it'll be the story that lets the various Batman writers move on from the scar of Identity Crisis and the mindwipe...the two-parters seem to give the stories enough room to develop (something I thought the first volume could have used) while still avoiding the massiveness of the six- and ten- and whatever-issue story arcs that have become so prevelent in DC-world of late
• Ex Machina: Power Down - sixth volume in this quality series feels too short...it starts the story but doesn't come even close to wrapping it up with any satisfaction...with only four issues in the trade, it also feels a bit like cheating to put out as a full-priced collection...we do get twenty-two pages of behind the scenes sketches and artwork, but I'd rather have a plot that moved along and maybe gave a bit of a revelation...weak collection from a strong series
• Batman Begins - The Girl hadn't seen this one, and we got the preview for The Dark Knight...it holds up well on second viewing, in case you were curious

Oh, tomorrow's entry's gonna be shorter since I've been working on this one for the better part of a week off and on...

Back Home Again in Indiana

...where it seems that I can see the gleemingly fleuorescent lights,

still shining bright on the roundball for me...

I spent Friday at the biggest high school gymnasium in the United States - the New Castle Chrysler Fieldhouse, home to the New Castle Spartans and 9,314 seats. Got to see my alma mater win the tourney, taking the victory in the #1 vs #2 matchup in the morning session. Got to hang out with the The Pater Familias and The Sister. Even got to visit the Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame for an hour or so.

It was a pretty good day, all in all, in spite of the spitting rain. Heck, the weather was far better than the weather has been during a lot of the other Hall Classics. The only thing missing was a trip to the Hickory Gym to make it an true orgy of Hoosier hysteria.

Indiana high school basketball is something that's legendarily famous, and its history is a pretty amazing thing - in spite of some significant changes that have come along since the move from a single-class system. I have a number of very fond memories of watching basketball in New Albany's gym (seating a then-paltry 4701 Bulldog fans) from the catwalk above the floor or up at the top of the three-story bleachers, supervised by an older family friend.

Basketball in Indiana certainly is something special, the kind of special that most small towns in the midwest are familair with. In Ohio, it might be football that brings the town together, but in Indiana, it's very clearly basketball.

In modern times, it's not quite the world of Hoosiers where the whole town gets together on Friday night, but it's certainly still the case that every varsity basketball game - especially in smaller towns - draws enough of the town that it's usually the big event that night.

Basketball is still king in Indiana, and no matter now many high school basketball games I go to in Ohio, it's just not the same.

During my first year teaching in Ohio, I took The Girl to a boys basketball game at Mount Healthy High School where I was teaching at the time. After my initial interview, the principal commented on how proud of their big gym they were. When we got to the game, The Girl's first side comment to me was a simple "where's the main gym", because Mt Healthy's gym wasn't even half the size of our high school's gym.

I miss Indiana high school ball.

---

In researching this post, I did stumble on a future road trip idea in the works. Could be kinda cool to see the games in all the Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky gyms. And I don't think it would be all that hard, either.

Beatles did these, too

Continuing with the Beatles cover after that short Christmas interlude...

Kids Incorporated "From Me to You" (or Eaton Rode or Fame Academy)


Billy Preston (a Beatles guest, admittedly) "Get Back" (or Ike & Tina again)


Jay Z & Danger Mouse - sort of "Glass Onion"


Neil Diamond "Golden Slumbers" (or TroyTones or some weird stage show)


Earth, Wind, & Fire "Got to Get You Into My Life" (or Chicago or Rockapella)


Joe Cocker "With a Little Help From My Friends" (or Ayo & Jude or John Belushi or Richie Sambora)


Oasis "Help" (or Bananarama)


U2 "Helter Skelter" (or The Killers or Souxsie & the Banshees or Aerosmith)


Richie Havens "Here Comes the Sun" (or Nina Simone or Bon Jovi or Taylor Hicks or George Benson)


Hugh Laurie "Hey Jude" (or Wilson Pickett and the Bee Gees or The Dakotas or Duane Allman & Wilson Pickett or The Punkles or Phantom Planet & Maroon 5)


Langhorn Slim "Honey Pie" (or King's Singers or Olivia Newton-John)


Jim Carey "I Am the Walrus" (or Frank Zappa or Oasis or Styx


I may or may not continue my way through the alphabet of Beatles covers another time, but this is certainly enough for now...

The Title of the Blog - Part 12

I know, this should be part eleven, in the string, but I don't seem to have part eleven saved on my home computer. Might have it at school, might just have things mislabeled - who knows. If eleven is at school, I'll post it next week. If this one's really eleven, such is the way of the world.

When today's column was originally published in The Bachelor, it was subtitled as Dusch's manifesto, having come out just after the Unabomber's manifesto was published in the NY Times & the Washington Post. Guess my environmental ideas echoed his in the eyes of The Bachelor's editors.

So be it...

We are being neutered. If you’ve picked up Time or Newsweek or watched the nightly news recently, you knew this, though. Lately scientists have been finding that our better life through chemical living might just lead to an infertile life through lowered sperm counts. In Finland and New York City and France and other places around the world, average sperm counts in males have dropped almost fifty percent in the last few decades. If they drop like that again man will be nearly infertile in thirty years. Those are your sons and mine. No grandkids to expect or even to hope for after that. Ever…and it’s our own faults. Most of those scientists are now thinking that this reduction is due to massive amount of chemicals in our lives, closer living quarters in large cities, and raised aggression levels due to the stress in our lives.

Simple enough then to solve the problem. All we have to do is move back the countries, get rid of our deodorants, pills, and hair sprays, and live happy, peaceful lives. Yeah right, I imagine that’ll happen about as soon as Rush Limbaugh throws a birthday party for Al Franken. And I’m not even suggesting we should try to do any of that. Why give up what we have worked so damn hard to achieve. We have dragged ourselves out from the waters, from the swamps, down form the trees, and in from the cities. Mankind has built the greatest artificial monuments ever seen on this planet. We have created the pyramids and raised the Hoover Dam. But in the process, we also have raped the land, poisoned the air, and killed many of the planet’s other inhabitants.

We are the greatest creation or either some Creator or some creative process, and we are also its greatest failure. Form the words of the Bible through those of Mark Twain, by way of paintings on French caves and from Picasso’s brush, we have forged an intellectual legacy never to be forgotten as long as there are men to read and to look. Through the genocides of Adolf Hitler and wholesale burnings of rainforests, however, we will also leave an inheritance of hatred and murder. Our time has come, and, with a combined effort form ourselves and Mother Nature, it too shall pass.

For the past four or five million years, we, as a species, have ruled the roost. We have been the most dominant animal in a vast web of life on this planet. We have made and massacred gods by the score, and have dared to challenge even Nature herself. But she will not be so easily brought low. Before us She watched the reign of lizards and of fish, both coming to ends by way of disasters to huge to be prepared for. Comets came and darkened the sky, freezing out those who were then masters. Volcanic eruptions covered the planet in lava, warming the very waters in which the rulers did swim. And yet life went on. The slate was beginning to get too crowded, so She came along and wiped it clean, only to see the new creatures write anew. For now we have covered the board until we live on top of one another in our cities, reaching and stretching for every available bit of space and air. It is our time to be washed away.

And we might just be the one doing the washing. We spent much of our time her in small skirmishes, armies marching and tanks rolling along as we killed each other by the thousands. But our numbers continued to grow. And then we found the ability to kill by the millions and then by the hundreds of millions. We tapped the power of the sun, and encased it in shells that we aimed at our own kind. We gave ourselves the ability to end it all, then we grew the anger to do it and, thankfully, the fear not to.

But for more than a generation now, we have pointed these unholy and evil weapons at each other and have bemoaned the fact that we are doing it. Others have fought to end this fatalistic posturing, and perhaps now they have it under control. But we have not been silent and lazy the whole time. We have designed ways to kill the fish and the fowl, the trees and those tramping along below them. In the air we have put chemicals that may slowly be boiling us alive. Into the waters we have dumped oils that poison our foods. Onto the grounds we have buried things that will glow for as long as we have been on this planet. And we have been stupid and blind the whole time.

But now we begin to realize that we will pay for our short-sightedness. And part of me hopes that we do. In mankind I believe the greatest of beauties has been realized. We have made wonderful things, have conquered the tyranny of genes to now let the sick and the lame lead healthy lives, and we have created as none other have ever done. I have to believe this because it s the only way that I can ever justify the rise of our kind. Yet I see the other side, the one that has killed others of our kind, has murdered those we never even got to know, has burned the trees, poisoned the world, and deserved to be cleansed. For these actions sometimes I wish for the destruction of us. Of an end for everything that we ever wrote, drew, or built. We must have wiped away so that someone else can begin anew.

But we must have no fear. Even if we so sicken our world that we can no longer live upon it, something else will be able to. Next, perhaps, will be the time of the rats, or of the cockroaches, or the insects, or the bugs. Out of the very ashes of our cities will rise afresh something that Nature sees every few millennia: the next big thing. She saw the dinosaurs rule for more than a hundred million years, and then they went. So far we have not spent one one-hundredth of that time on Earth as this big thing, and She won’t give a damn about us when we are gone.

So why should we even bother to keep the air clean or to stop killing anything that is less than we are? Roughly ninety-nine percent of the species that have ever existed on our world are now extinct, and we shall join that number some day. So should we not flaunt out moment of glory, grasp the short time that we have the throne, and live our lives as selfishly as we can?

Yes, by all means, we should, and yet I hope we do not. The world is still beautiful, the forests still thick and teaming with lives yet to be explored or lived, the sunsets still draw me to the sea. For these beauties, for your wives yet loved, and for our children unborn, we should protect that in which we find beauty. We must ensure that they will someday be faced with this same choice. Will we – and someday they – pluck flowers from the ground, pave over their fields, and build skyward, or will they cherish, preserve, and enjoy only to give the next generation a chance to choose again?

Only one of those choices allows us to choose again. The other takes the choice away from our children and ensures that Nature will take the choice away from us and us away from our world. Unless we take ourselves away before She has the chance…

I'm not so sure that my ideas found here are very much different from others that I've expressed before. Interesting how little the brain changes sometimes...

Christmas reflections

Let's see what I can give you about my holidays...

I'm a little surprised that Elvis has the top selling Christmas album of all time. I would've guessed on one of the Mannheim Steamrollers or the Now collection - which really is outstanding (not quite as good as the older version that I own.

~~~

Somehow a two-week break seems so much longer when I'm putting things off and saying that "I'll do them during break". The break always begins with urgent things that have to be done before Christmas, a bit of time spent putzing around just because I "need a break", realizing that it's just a day before I leave for my parents' house so no time to do anything real and substantive, then heading in for three or so days of Christmas at the 'rents'. Now that we're past those days, the break seems to be almost over - even though I've still got five days or so. I should probably get cracking and do something from my list of things to that I've put off 'til break.

~~~

I've got a bunch of thank you notes to write (because folks seem to be kinda generous 'round Christmastime.) The notes are for...

• three seasons of Batman Beyond on DVD
• I'm a Lebowski, You're a Lebowski book
• a fruit-powered clock that's gonna end up in my classroom when I teach electrochem
• bacon-flavored mints & a what would bacon do? folder
• three new Wabash College shirts
• a couple of Panera gift cards
• a pretty cool Marvel poster
• DVD of Absolute Zero that looks absolutely atrocious and hilarious
• the new One Child laptop (a review is forthcoming)
• a Spudtrooper
• gift cards to the Esquire and Dewey's - making for a great night out for me and The Girl
• bread mixes & a terra cotta bread baker
• magnetic building blocks
• Clan Apis
• a new toilet
• a new washer and dryer
• a chocolate acorn filled with chocolate squirrels

I know, I'm a pretty lucky guy, you don't have to remind me, Calen.

~~~

A Christmas Story - the movie with Darren McGavin and that Billingsly kid - is moving toward becoming tiresome to me. For three days around Christmas, it seemed that it was on tv anywhere that I went - BW3s, my parents' house, The Mother-in-law's house, the nursing home, a party. There comes a time when even the finest holiday chestnuts need to be set aside and kept for special occasions, rolled out once a year for everybody to enjoy. Overkill isn't just a river in Egypt.

~~~

I'm having trouble with the wrapping of Christmas presents. You slap some paper on the gifts and then rip the paper right off. I'm guessing that most of the paper - and the bows and ribbon - gets chucked into the trash which is ecologically and fiscally wasteful. I haven't found a solution just yet - other than to maybe buy recycled wrapping paper or put everything in the Sunday comics - the big problem there, however, is that I don't normally buy the paper, so I'd still be buying paper that I don't automatically have around.

Anybody out there do anything that's socially acceptable but involves at least the wasting of fewer resources? Or have any suggestions?

~~~

Went to Kenwood Mall on Thursday to take care of a couple of returns. It was two days after Christmas, and the place was every bit as crowded as it was a month before the holiday. It didn't make sense to me that there would be so many people out and about at two o'clock on a Thursday afternoon. I know that school folks aren't working during the holidays and that some people get holiday time off, but isn't there a down time at that mall? Sheesh...

Long live the season of commerce...

~~~

My dogs seem about as happy with their amazingly simple Christmas gifts - Nutro biscuits, a Nylabone, and a plush, squeeky chicken - as is just about any human that I know. There are a lot of times that I envy the little bags of fur.

Skimming what there is to be skimmed

As I do semi-regularly...things are a bit thin this time as many of my favorite blogs have taken the holidays off, but they - like I - will come back strong starting this weekend...see ya then, folks...

• Take that, mass-transit-using public!
• I'm in...totally in - and I'm down with this meticulous anaylsis
• Merry Christmas, the weird way!
• I'm sorry, but I want one
• And I want this, too
• A gift list for me and mine
• Not at all what I expected
• Check out Abigail's diary

Merry Christmas...and a moment of reflection...

It's an odd thing to celebrate this 1000th post.

I don't know that it's really much of an accomplishment outside of being an act of stuborness and determination, and I know that the 1000th post isn't really all that more special than any other around this number except that we like the look of the nice, round numbers so we celebrate them.

It's also somewhat of a bittersweet number because it means that the next landmarks are a number of years off...

• 2.5 years = 1000 posts
• so...7.5 years = 5000 posts
• 25 years = 10000 posts

...and I don't know that I'll be doing this for the next twenty-plus years. If so, I can't imagine that the blog's going to look the same as it does now. First off, I need to get some sort of graphical header up top. It's an embarrassment that I'm still using the craptacular header that blogger offers up with its ever-so-stylish grey outline box. Plus, I'm thinking that in twenty years, that Googlezon will have found a better way for me to blog than all this manual labor of actually moving plastic pieces with letters painted on them. I'll probably just have a stream of consciousness recording that everybody will be able to download directly into their cerebral cortex from theis feed tube.

By the same token, I'm willing to celebrate whatever the accomplishment is just because I kinda dig talking to you folks in this way. Admittedly, it's not exactly the purest kind of psychiatric couch - it being linked from my school site, as I always point out, kind of limits the topics that I'm willing to cover - but it's an experience both cathartic and connecting to offer up my thoughts and links (wow, can there be anything more frivolous than posting a link to a neat online game and claiming that it's my most significant thought of the day or more hubristic than thinking anybody will give a crap?) to you.

The real joy, however, is in knowing that somebody's been listening, and the comments that you folks leave are what makes this gig truly worthwhile.

Thanks to you, Calen, Katydid, Danecht, Andrew, Craig, ColdNorthGamer, CoachSullivan, Rob, the Transbuddhas, tl, Ame, RuffRyder, Grace, Kyle, Achilles3, CollectedEditions, others who I'm sadly forgetting, and a whole lot more lurkers, some of whom I'm aware of - Rachel, Ashley, Morgan, I'm talking to you - but based on my Google Analytics stats, a number of whom I don't know.

To you loyal readers, I pledge to keep doing what I've been doing for at least a while longer...but better than ever.

Any requests for post topics? Has there been any times when you've thought wonder what chemguy thinks about this?

If so, throw down the topic, and I'll pledge to post about it with reasonable haste.

Oh, and if anybody's in need of some holiday cheer, might I recommend this cartoon.

Thanks for sticking with me...

Countdown to 1000: Are you serious? This is it. The big one...get with it, spudboy, and have a merry christmas...

In which our blogging hero is conflicted

Today's post regards a rather scary little story that I happened upon this weekend in The Cincy Enquirer:

Facebook prank turns bad
Taylor honor students file suit after expulsion

I'm all over the place in trying to figure out a response to this little prank.

Thought #1 comes from the teacher side of me. It terrifies me to think that a student could take one of my photos - lovingly posted here, thanks for asking - and prank up a page suggesting what are clearly pretty horrible things and that I'd have no school-based recourse to stop them. Those are the kinds of accusations that once said - even in jest - spread very quickly and head rather quickly into costing somebody their job.

It may be tough for a student person to realize how wrong such a joke can be, how horrible can be the repercussions of such a gag told in passing jest.

Thought #2 is that the interweb - no matter how much I've come to love and care for it dearly - is hugely culpable in this incident. In the past, a note might be written, a gag told in the hallways, a chuckle in the back of the classroom would've been how this gag would've gone. If the words were repeated a few times and spread 'round, there would never have been proof, never have been any tangible permanence to the rumor, and eventually it would have faded away.

With the interwebs' creation, however, that rumor gains electronic permanence and doesn't die nearly as quickly. Plus there's the anonymity of sites like Facebook (and, honestly, Blogger) in which we have no real clue who's behind these posts. Sure, lots of you know who I am, but that's because I've owned up to things offweb. I know lots of bloggers whose deeds I follow without having the foggiest clue as to who they might actually be. As long as I'm just getting a chuckle from their words, from their willingly offered observations, there's no harm, no foul.

Here, however, that anonymity has lead someone into a pretty dangerous place in which the students pretended to be their teacher - no matter how jokingly they intended the ruse. That starts to border on identity theft, and as a society we're going to need to find out how seriously we want to defend these kinds of transgressions before they get to the point where someone's identity means absolutely nothing.

Thought #3 is that it's free speech. I've enjoyed a bunch of parodies in my times - heck, Weird Al's made a career out of them - and I'm sure that some of them were things that I didn't clearly know were parodies on the first look or listen. Where do we draw that line? Where do we say "yes, parodies are okay as long as it's clearly not the original work?" Do we have to include a sticker right across the center of the Mona Lisa Simpson saying that it's not the original work?

We have the right to tell a joke, to adopt a funny voice an mimick a celebrity in the name of humor and to use the defense that "it's funny" without worrying that Big Brother throwing down and locking us up. 'Cause it is funny, you know, because it's happening to a famous person. They asked for it. They're getting rich off of our attention. They should take the joke.

But where do we draw the line?

How do we defend out right to free speech and our right to an identity?

How do we punish the act that might cause someone harm without punishing the act that doesn't cause harm?

How do we protect jokes with the punchline your mom - which are the funniest kinds of jokes, let's be honest - while still making it clear that I didn't really facebook you mom?

Not this week, anyway...

By the way, the pdf of the initial court decision in this case is absolutely fascinating reading. Please take a few minutes and read through it if I've piqued your interest in the least.

Countdown to 1000: One more to go...which would make this some kind of palindromic number, wouldn't it? This post's like the devil's number spun 'round. Could lead to some sort of accidental delivery to the wrong house in a bad comedy movie, eh?

Merry Moflinkin' christmas

We close out the Christmas series of videos thusly...

Rza and Craig Feurgeson Decking the Halls

A Muppet Family Christmas - Part 1 (the other parts are linked from here)

Bing & Bowie in a modern classic - "Little Drummer Boy/Peace on Earth"

Slade's "Merry Christmas Everybody"


Band Aid's "Do They Know It's Christmas"

I had no idea they did this again in 1989 and 2004

A Scrubs/Charlie Brown Christmas - with a touch of the Beasties for good measure

Dave Matthews & Tim Reynolds "Christmas Song"

"Wonderful Christmastime" by the weenie and his wife

Zach Kim accompanying himself on "White Christmas"

U2 "It's Christmas (Baby, Please Come Home)"

The King's "Blue Christmas"

"Christmas Rapping" by Kurtis Blow

"Star Wars Holiday Special" (part 1)

Countdown to 1000: Two more posts needed...which puts me right at Christmas and ready to rock the world into quadruple digits. Take that, Christmas!

The Mitchell Report - such as it is

Baseball has come out with the Mitchell Report.

If you're not aware of the Mitchell Report, it's the final report of an investigation into steroid (ab)use in major league baseball, the report of an investigation lead by former US Senator George Mitchell.

Mitchell's investigation has lead to a report that MLB is considering as the official and nearly-final word on performance enhancing drug use in baseball during the era from the early-1990's through the early- or mid-2000s. In the report, a number of current- or former-MLB players were implicated as being steroid users - on an occasional or regular basis.

And I don't care.

I don't give the faintest, littlest, tiniest crap about the report in the least.

Owners, players, reporters, fans all looked the other way for a decade or so.

We watched Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa smack record numbers of home runs out of the park for a number of years. We saw more 50-HR seasons in the 1990s (13 of them) than we saw in any previous decade, until the 2000s, which has twelve already with two years to go. And we came up with excuses about better weight training, smaller ballparks, expansion, and weaker pitchers at the bottom end of the bullpen.

And I'm okay with that.

Yes, baseball needs to find a way to get rid of steroids from the game, but baseball needs to do that by moving forward and negotiating with the player's association to start regular, random, effective testing in the game.

But what baseball needs to not do is to look backward and speculate. To not debate about clearing records of those who have been implicated, because we'll never know which homeruns, how many wins, which strikeouts were the results of steroids and which weren't.

A done bun can't be undone.

Let the records stand.

Let the players into the hall of fame because - like it or not - they were the best of this era no matter what.

And move on.

I don't want to ever hear about the Mitchell Report or the players named therin or who might or might not have used in the past. I don't even want to hear about who might or might not be using now - unless there's some sort of evidence to win the argument.

I

don't

care.

Countdown to 1000: Three to go, it's like a real frickin' countdown at this point. We're just about ready to light this candle.

The Title of the Blog - Part 10

I love Wabash like almost no other place that I've ever known. My years at Wabash were amazing, and I do everything that I can to pay Wabash back for those years by recruiting in any way that I can manage.

But Wabash isn't for everybody. It's a tiny, all-male school where the students are pushed to do a lot of original thinking and not so much wrote memorization. It's not an amazing party school, and we don't have a hundred thousand students at the football stadium every weekend in the fall.

In the spring of every Wabash year, we host a bunch of high school students for what we call Honor Scholar Weekend. Most of the high schoolers there are taking written tests to earn big, big scholarships. On Friday and Saturday nights and all-day Sunday, the Honor Scholars get free reign to wander the campus and get to know the various fraternities.

We put our best face forward and try to sell the place as much as we possibly can, because not every one of those honor scholars is going to come to Wabash, so we're still selling the school and our own fraternities.

And The Bachelor didn't even ask me to write a negative column. So I offered it on my own.

Let me caution you, good Honor Scholars, for you are about to take a very grave step… ~ Paraphrasing a fraternity brother of mine

Welcome back my friends, to the show that never ends. We’re so glad you could attend, come inside, come inside… ~ Emerson, Lake, and Palmer – “Karn Evil #9” – first impression, part two

Welcome, welcome, welcome…to the greatest show on earth. This weekend, we present for your approval the greatest circus viewed by any pair of high school eyes. Behind every next curtain lie feats of magic greater than any you could even imagine. Inside each tent awaits a creature previously only seen in sagas and stories, but now ready to be shown to you and you alone – for a small fee, of course. And along the paths lie a multitude of performers willing to astound and amaze you as you travel from tent to tent, from tantalizing trick to terrifying treat…pause a moment., deposit whatever small bit of coinage you may feel required to, and relax…for you are about to see things you never dreamed of…

I think that’s about the best introduction to Honor Scholar weekend that I could ever manage to give you folks. This is the weekend when Wabash spit-shines the bust of old Eli in the library, begs the frat boys to be good for a while, and prays for sunshine, sociability, and silence. We, in turn, clean up the houses and dorms the best we can, try to seem a little more controlled and cultured that we do the rest of the time and try to sell out school, our fraternities, and ourselves to a bunch of high school seniors. You may never get this kind of treatment again in your lives, guys, so enjoy it while you can.

And take it all with a grain of salt. Some of us will lie to you, telling you that every weekend we bus women from Purdue, IU, and Butler to party with us. Others will tell you that we barely miss women around here anyway. We work like dogs all week long and party all weekend long. It’s the best college in the world, and it’s gonna be perfect for you.

And maybe, if you’re lucky, you’ll find someone who will sit down with you and talk for a while. He might be honest, and he might be brutal, but listen to him. In fact, listen to everything that you hear, and make your own decision. This place is not for everyone. This place probably isn’t even for one percent of the people who have ever heard of it. The pressure here can sometimes be enough to break men far better than me. The work load at times is insanely heavy, demanding you to push yourself to – and beyond – limits that you never knew you had. As our recruitment flyers said once if not still, “It won’t be easy, but it will be worth it.” What they forgot to add was “for some of you.”

Four years ago, I showed up at Wabash knowing one person, and not even liking him all that much. I stayed in a fraternity that I hoped would like me enough to ask me to join, and I made a friend. Nate was the first student at Wabash I could really talk to. Kenny was a little abrasive, but an okay guy. But Nate was to become a friend of mine. As a sophomore Nate wasn’t too far removed from the troubles that I was going through, and I felt that he could help me make it through, and I felt he could help me make it through because he had. That first semester we spent quite a few late nights talking over problems that one of us was having at the time. And Nate became my best friend in the house.

He snapped late in that semester, never finished taking his finals, and wasn’t back after Christmas break for anything more than a visit. It took Nate a year and a half to realize that Wabash was not the place for him. That what he saw in Wabash wasn’t quite really was in Wabash. The next year we lost a couple more people from my fraternity, and in the years since then, we’ve probably said goodbyes to half a dozen guys who decided that this place wasn’t right for them in some way. Others have been miserable but have stayed because they saw no way out for themselves.

And quite a few of us have complained whined, cherished, and enjoyed this place thoroughly and are now a short time from leaving it forever. We have jumped through every hoop that Wabash has set up for us. We have given as much as $80,000 to kill ourselves with work and stress. We have fallen asleep in lectures and discussions because of too many late nights needed just to keep our heads above water. And we have made great friends who have done it all right along side us the whole time.

Many of you will end up going somewhere else, to DePauw, to Ball State, to Evansville, to Ivy Tech. And for that, I am glad. Because this place is not for you. You are no less for choosing to avoid a place that would cause you four years of misery and heartache, and I wish you the best. Some of you will come here, stay a while, and then will leave. For you I am sorry that we could not have let you see all that we demand before you signed on. And for the rest of you, welcome to a small group of men, bound by a common hell and joy that we call Wabash.

Of the last group, Wabash will ask many things. It will demand your trouble, your time, and your toil. It will demand also your money while you are here and will ask for it when you no longer are around. Your fraternity brothers – or friends – or hall mates – or whatevers – will ask of you your heart and your soul and your help. And you damn well better give it to them, because if any of us had to go through all of this alone, then none of us would make it.

But for now, I ask you very little. Have fun, play volleyball, eat the food that we offer you. Promise nothing in haste – if the Lambda Chi’s want you desperately enough, then they’ll wait until you’re back in the fall. Get to know somebody who seems honest with you, get his phone number, and call him when you have questions. (Mine is 361-7042, if you have any for me.) He might not able to answer them all, but he’ll know someone who can. Above all listen to everything that anyone tells you, and take it all with a grain of salt. We want to be honest with you, but sometimes we try a little harder than we should in order to make ourselves look good. Is that evil? Nah, just little imperfect. Kind of like Wabash itself…

And The Bachelor editors felt it was negative enough that they printed an editorial/opinion piece saying how cool Wabash was just to balance out my column.

PS - It was pointed out to me that I've never actually pointed out why this blog - and the originating column in The Bachelor - is called In Deference to My Idols. I don't know that the story is going to live up to any of the curiosity that you folks might have, but I might as well throw down the brief story.

I'd written my first column for The Bachelor - the column about Jerry Garcia - and JJ told me that I needed a title for my column. The first column was a clear shot across the bow of anybody who was sticking to their old idolization of the sixties icons - Garcia, Dylan, and the rest. And the phrase In Deference to My Idols popped fully-formed into my brain, partially because it wasn't remotely appropriate for the first column and partially because it wasn't anything that I was planning on showing.

I'm not the kind to have idols. I don't want to meet the people who make the music that I love, and I don't want their autographs or anything that touched their person or whatever. So I'm certainly not going to hold a lot of deference for the idols of others, either, or to the idols I don't have.

I do hold certain folks in pretty high regard, and I recognize the influence of certain folks on me. I wouldn't call them idols - not exactly, no - but I do respect a whole bunch of folks.

Deference for my idols?

Not so much, though I do like the turn of phrase.

Countdown to 1000: Four posts to the magic number. That's fewer posts than IU has won national titles. Shouldn't be a challenge.

Another top five...five times

My five favorite concert films...

1. Awesome! I F---ing Shot That
2. I am Trying to Break Your Heart
3. The Last Waltz
4. Rattle & Hum
5. Purple Rain

My five favorite basketball films (in honor of Semi-Pro)

1. Hoosiers
2. Pistol: the birth of a legend (I remember it from television showing as a kid.)
3. Basketball (It's Matt & Trey, so I'm all in.)
4. Hoop Dreams
5. Blue Chips (but mostly for the basketball games)

My favorite films from 1975 (the year I was born)...

1. The Apple Dumpling Gang
2. Rikki-Tikki-Tavi
3. Jaws
4. Nashville
5. Return of the Pink Panther

My favorite films from 2000 (the year I was married)...

1. O Borther, Where Art Thou?
2. High Fidelity
3. Snatch
4. Traffic
5. Almost Famous

My favorite films with a Bob Dylan connection...

1. The Big Lebowski - "The Man in Me"
2. High Fidelity - "Tonight I'll Be Staying Here With You", "Most of the Time", "Shooting Star"
3. The Freshman - "Maggie's Farm"
4. The Royal Tenenbaums - "Wigwam", "Billy - Main Title"
5. Dazed & Confused - "Hurricane"
And that doesn't even take into account the biggest movie part he's ever had - Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid

My favorite films with a Randy Newman scores

1. Toy Story 2
2. Toy Story
3. Pleasantville
4. The Natural
5. Monsters, Inv

Countdown to 1000: Five posts left, fittingly enough on a top five post.

Who're you listening to?

The question isn't what are you listening to but rather who are you listening to?

On Tuesday, the FCC voted to remove the rule that formerly blocked corporations from owning newspapers and television/radio in the same media market, a rule that has existed for three-plus decades and has guaranteed that there would be at least a few voices in every market.

Currently, ten gigantic corporations own a massive and frightening portion of our media. For example, when you pop open an issue of Time, Life, People, or any DC Comic series; watch the WB, HBO, Cinemax, TBS, or TNT; check a Warner Brothers movie; listen to music on any of forty record labels; or looking at the interwebs via AOL; you're opening up your mouth and getting baby-birded from AOL/Time Warner. And there are nine other massive corporations that have been gobbling up a media left and right, attempting to guarantee that whenever and wherever we turn, we're getting our messages from them.

And the FCC isn't allowing it.

The FCC is encouraging it.

The FCC which has been, throughout its seventy-year history, charged with ensuring that the media of the realm is used to contribute to the good of the people is instead ensuring that our media is instead used for the good of the corporations.

This is in spite of a national tour in which the FCC director himself asked to hear public opinion on the relaxation of media ownership rules, a tour in which he heard almost universal condemnation of further conglomeration.

And the director didn't seem to care in the least.

We need a new director.

We need a new president to appoint that new director.

We need to be angry because we're about to be controlled even further.

We need NPR and PBS and every independent radio and television station, internet streamer, and newspaper publisher possible.

And you need to check out this past week's Bill Moyers Journal to learn more.

And until then, go listen to some Steve Earle and Eric Idle tunes, would ya?

Countdown to 1000: Six posts to go...right at half a dozen...and with five days to Christmas, I'm going to have to double post a day to spot on with the holiday. I'm good with that, though, because I'm not working for the next two weeks.

A list of lists - 'cause we're Americans

I am currently down with Time's Fifty Top 10 Lists of 2007.

It's a list of best-of lists.

It's what Americans were made to make.

Somehow it's in our natural culture to make top-ten lists.

We list things the way that the British qeue up...the way Bangladeshis (sp?) put up with monsoons.

We are total beasts at it.

If we can't somehow rank it, we can't possibly enjoy it to the fullest extent.

So we turn this week to Time magazine's Fifty Top Ten Lists of 2007.

In these lists, we get to know that drug-resistance TB was a bigger underreported story than Angola's growing economy. 'Cause we need to know that kind of stuff.

Mit Romney's hunting exageration was a bigger campaign gaffe than John McCain singing "Bomb, Bomb, Bomb...Bomb, Bomb, Iran".

That The Lives of Others is nearly the best film of the year - no matter what Katydid says.

That I have only seen two of the eighteen movies listed as top. Clearly I should be seeing more movies.

I should also be reading more because the entire top ten books list is a blank to me and I really, really want to read The World Without Us, but the only ones I've read is Then We Came to the End - which is, admittedly, awesome - and HP & the Deathly Hallows - which was pretty good, too.

That frickin' Amy Winehouse song has an awesome chorus and sound. Speaking of which, I need to listen to more stuff because the only songs or albums I knew were both by Feist.

And they've got great taste in graphic novels, finally a category with which I'm familiar with #3, #5, and #6 - which has come to grow on me.

In a truly shocking development, global warming seems to be a bit of a bit deal - bigger, even, than a plane crash. Imagine that...

We know that Don't tase me, bro is a better t-shirt slogan than I have a wide stance - a fact about which I would disagree.

And we know that the most awkward moment of 2007 was the Columbia president's intro of Iranian president Ahmadinejad - more so, even, than Rudy-9/11's daughter supporting Barack.

Plus, there are some things on the list that I don't understand at all. Seriously, a mud volcano?!?!

And how does colony collapse disorder not get the #1 most under-reported story?

And that doesn't even begin to deal with Rolling Stone's Forty Reasons We Loved Television in '07.

Oh, the crappiest part of the entire fifty top ten lists is that there's nowhere you can see any of the lists in its entirety at once...which is its #1 shortfall.

Countdown to 1000: Seven posts still to go - seven of the most outstanding things you're gonna read ever...EVER...EVER...