five things that scare me

1) taking a bath
2) broken bones
3) really really small insects in large numbers
4) amateur poetry
5) smart people with power

five things I learned from bumper stickers

1) one in five drivers is also a scuba diver
2) everyone has been to the outer banks
3) Calvin may have a bladder problem
4) offensive things are less offensive when they rhyme
5) a lot of people don't understand the term "resale value"

five things that are optimum for seeing faces in

1) pictures
2) windows
3) clouds
4) baked goods
5) mirrors

five things that offend me

1) keanu reeves
2) places that say they're not hiring but that they're accepting applications
3) bad breath
4) facebook suggesting people it thinks I should be friends with
5) fiscal policy

the perfect plan

I don't usually post non-list things on here. But this was too good to pass up. I was reading a post on toplessrobot.com and this dialogue made me laugh for about twenty minutes.

...yes I'm a nerd
- - - - -
Let us imagine that Luke Skywalker is trying to tell you his plan to rescue Han Solo from Jabba the Hutt.

Luke: “Okay so, first we get Lando Calrissian posing as a guard inside Jabba’s Palace.”

You: “How do we do that?”

Luke: “We just get him a costume and he—just walks in.”

You: “Um, okay, say it’s that easy. So then Lando gets Han out of the carbonite and we pick them up and get away?”

Luke: “No. What happens next is that I put my lightsaber in a hidden compartment in R2-D2 and send R2-D2 and C3PO to Jabba the Hutt as gifts.”

You: “Wait, why-“

Luke: “Just listen. Next we have Leia pose as a bounty hunter arriving at Jabba’s palace with Chewbacca captured. She’s going to hand over Chewbacca to Jabba.”

You: “Wait, why? Wouldn’t that mean we would now have to rescue Han Solo, Chewbacca, R2-D2 and C3PO? That just makes it more difficult, right?”

Luke: “Just go with me here. Next, Leia is going to sneak around at night and get Han Solo out of the carbonite, but get captured.”

You: “What? Why would we get everyone captured like that?”

Luke: “Now I’ll show up, use my Force powers to get in to Jabba’s fortress, get past the guards to an audience before Jabba and then use my Jedi mind trick to get Jabba to release everyone. If that doesn’t work, then I’ll get captured.”

You: “Okay, if you can just use your Force powers to get in to the palace and all the way to Jabba, then let's just have you go in right now and get Han out."

Luke: “No, that's stupid. I’m going to get myself captured. Because then you see, we’ll be taken to the sarlacc pit and then, when we’re on the skiff, I’ll get sent out first and then R2-D2 will manage to get to the top of Jabba’s sail barge and shoot out my lightsaber, and then with Lando’s help, we’ll just—rescue everyone and then everything will be fine!”

You: “That is the stupidest plan I’ve ever heard of.”

Luke:“I’ve thought of everything.”

You: “Clearly you didn’t.”

five things I do that are probably annoying to someone else

1) make things up when I don't know the answer
2) repeatedly use cornball jokes your dad would tell
3) interrupt people when they are talking to me
4) insert "that's what she said" into ironic moments in conversation. not where it is supposed to go to make sense, but purposely where it makes none
5) smile when arguing

five words i'd like to use

in the context of these definitions

1) reel: a lively dance of the Scottish Highlands
2) legit: a jazz musician's somewhat ironic term for music, or a gig, that is not Jazz
3) beerocracy: government by brewers or brewing interests
4) counterfeiter: someone who puts together kitchen cabinets
5) rookieduke

five things that have recently made me happy

1) this picture
2) this video
3) this fake commercial
4) this movie trailer
5) my lsat score

five things that are better remembered than they actually were

1) that thing you went to drunk
2) fast food meals
3) sitcoms
4) ex-girlfriends
5) anecdotes

from email to blog to mission accomplished

My sister sent me one of those chainy emails a week ago. It was a list of lists. I drooled. Here are my answers.

1) Four places that I go to over and over: kroger, the bathroom, on a run, the cellar (bar)

2) Four people who e-mail me regularly: grandma, varous virginia tech listservs, facebook, prince zhibaraj of kenya

3) Four of my favorite places to eat: in my bed, on a comfortable couch, on a grassy hill, with my family

4) Four places I would rather be right now: in a movie theater, chicago, in law school, two years ago

5) Four people I think will respond: no one reads my blog

6) Four TV shows I watch: ace of cakes, the office, bizarre foods, no reservations

irritatingly punny

five businesses to start with a name and go from there

1) CupKate's: bakery for someone named kate

2) Pizza This: italian restaraunt (slogan- "you wanna pizza me" featuring a britney spears look-a-like biting into a delicious pizza) "fun for the whole dysfunctional family"

3) Guilt-Tea: tea shop and sex boutique

4) Startrucks: truck-stop coffee shop where poetic elitist truckers go to be seen and spend ridiculous amounts of time reading thick novels and updating their twitter

5) Books-a-Trillion: one-up two-up

soundtrack to an uneventful life

Wake up: the siren song of my alarm clock laced with the growling of my girlfriends multiple vibrating phone alarms

breakfast: whistling of the tea kettle punctuated by the crackle of fried eggs

shower: the drum of the falling water and soprano whine of water pressure

internet surfing: youtube random beats interrupted by tracks of laughter and the clickity clack of computer keys

lunch: hum and chew, crunch and swallow

miscellaneous work and boredom: sighs and yawns, and wind instruments

dinner: an unpredictable opera of boiling water, cutting board chops, running faucets, and sliding kitchen drawers

late night television: assorted snippets of the who on CSI and the intoxicating final jeopardy jingle

falling asleep: the victorious bass of neighbors stereo and lyrical shouting in apartment hallway

five things that have been given a bad rap

whether they deserved it or not

1) tobacco
2) tomatoes
3) puns
4) hipsters
5) poets

(i feel bad for hipsters who use lots of puns in their poetry and read them aloud while smoking cigarettes. and tomatoes)

five generic long-term goals

1) find a job I like, and keep it
2) don't be responsible for, or even a contributing factor to, anyone's death
3) be someone's role model
4) don't go to jail
5) wrestle a clown

four fake words and one useless one

1) snowvember
2) horrorscope
3) sparkitecture
4) gubernatorial
5) chinpossible

five criteria on which the presidential candidates should be chosen

1) their ability to recite the names of every member of the house and senate in alphabetical order
2) whether or not they have a hot daughter that is roughly my age
3) whether or not they can achieve the presidential award on their physical fitness test (I doubt mccain can pull out a decent v-sit and reach)
4) whether or not their smile makes other nations angry
5) their ability to rhyme

so there's that

Results of your Attention Deficit Disorder Quiz:

"You scored a total of 51"

five things that make you wonder if its creator was on drugs

1) lolcats
2) the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics (even more questionable: the many-minds theory)
3) planet earth the series
4) giant t.v. remotes
5) planet earth the thing

evolution of music

drums
drums and humming
just humming
replace humming with moaning
add drums back in again
throw in a hollow tube that you can blow through
moaning turns into words
combine words and drums and hollow tubes with new wooden thing with strings
now make it all electronic


(this is 2008's 100th list! whoopie!)

five more dirty jobs for mike rowe

1) elementary school janitor
2) costar to ben afleck
3) plumber for andrew zimmern
4) testicle surgery shaver
5) accountant

five things I don't know the difference between

1) sneakers and tennis shoes
2) audrey hepburn and katharine hepburn
3) sugar and caffeine
4) cobalt and royal blue
5) r&b

the fmb awards

five more 'bests' that have infected my life like a disfiguring skin fungus lying in wait on the floor of a public shower

the award for:
1) best song to induce irresistible cheesy white-guy head-bobbing goes to bay-root (runner-up for best video of a guy playing an empty snapple bottle)
2) best new way for me to spend way too much money goes to friggin cereal
3) best dedicated performance goes to this chick (check out the finger points at 1:42 and again at 2:58)
4) best amazingness that makes me wish I had majored in something else goes to illu-imagine-ation (i want this one)
5) best random website find today goes to the curiosityshoppe

Ten things I was reminded of from my 15 year old self

As a project during my freshman year of high school (it's dated January 9, 2001), the teacher told us to write a letter to ourselves four years from then and that she would give it back to us when we graduated. I found this letter recently (almost 8 years later) in a box under a box and was reminded of some rather strange yet familiar things. For some reason, I feel that this is what everyone's freshman-to-future-self letter would have looked like.

1) "high school rules!"
2) my "handwriting is terrible and [my] grammar is even worse, but [i'm] a rising guitar player"
3) inside joke: "take a brisk walk. a brisk walk in my ass!"
4) a song I once wrote called "monster coochie"
5) inside joke: "ten foot clown pole"
6) another song I wrote called "little punk rock girl" for a girl named Jenna Scharf.
7) "Call Laura Tuteral, your best friend, in Florida!"
8) inside joke: "carrot shop"
9) "before you judge someone, you must walk a mile in their shoes. Then turn around and judge them, because you're a mile away and now you have their shoes."
10) my handwriting looks the same and I still can't play guitar

hard to define transitions

1) the temperature between yummy coffee and dark, acidic water
2) the space between being complete strangers and being friends: "friengers"
3) age 22 to 27: an old dick to your younger friends and a young asshole to your older ones
4) the moment you realize you are wrong
5) the area between a coherent and accurate memory and a fuzzy and questionable image that could have been a dream

things that make me shiver lately

1) the future
2) law school applications
3) the military
4) fall weather
5) sara palin

here come the links

went to the beach over columbus day weekend and a friend ended up using the opportunity to get engaged

something old: i want that painted on my wall

something new: what's newer than the future?

something borrowed: my sister introduced me to it and now i'm learning names i never knew

something blue: just discovered and i'm anxious to give it a go

something for you: let it do the dirty work

five more (yes i'm irritable) annoying things

1) forced accents
2) breaking a chip off in the salsa
3) being corrected on grammar
4) finding out too late that your new beer is not a twist off
5) being reminded of a mistake you already beat yourself up over

being ahead of a curve that you aren't a part of

fivethirtyeight: I blogged about it a few posts ago (number 1) and then see it talked about on the Colbert Report. I think I'll take the credit for that. Yep, it's a good thing Stephen Colbert reads my blog. You're welcome Nate Silver!

five things that are surprisingly delicious
1) warm raisins
2) peanut butter and jelly mixed with yogurt
3) cold beer after a run
4) frozen peanut butter cups
5) solving a problem

bonus) peanut butter

five things I've been introduced to lately and I like

1) thanks to some girl and stumbleupon
2) thanks to craig
3) thanks to vincent the geek
4) thanks to webupon and vincent the geek
5) thanks to newsgrounds and webupon and vincent the geek

five annoying things that don't have a specific name

1) someone commenting on your strategy of playing a game while you play that same game, sometimes against that person
2) the sound of drunk laughter through a wall when you have to get up early in the morning
3) thinking you have food in the refrigerator that really isn't there
4) watching t.v. and seeing the same commercial twice during a commercial break
5) having a song stuck in your head, but only part of it, and can't remember either who it's by or what it's called, and when you hum it to your friends to see if they can recognize it, they just look at you like your crazy and try to change the subject nervously, but you persist, because it's been bugging you all day, just repeating and repeating the same 4 or 5 or 10 words with that catchy melody that goes up and down and then pauses on that one note for a couple of seconds, and it reminds you of that time in high school when you were making out

best fake father figures

1) gene hackman
2) darren mcgavin
3) robin williams
4) chevy chase
5) sean connery

five things i did the hour before i took the lsat

1) ate a lot of yogurt
2) trimmed my beard
3) cut my finger nails
4) 35 pushups
5) flossed

hard to break habits

1) laughing out of sympathy
2) staying up past midnight
3) beer
4) exaggerated and clearly audible yawns
5) sniffing fingers all day after cutting up onions
6) making lists that are longer than five points
7) ignoring people that make me uncomfortable
8) using the word "awesome" and the phrase "right on" when i have noting else to say
9) capitalizing the word "i"
10) assuming things
11) scab picking
12) internet social networking (a lot like scab picking)
13) talking during movies that aren't in theaters
14) House, Scrubs, CSI, Law and Order, and The Office
15) not using a coaster
16) selfishness
17) sleeping on my stomach
18) living beyond my means
19) using curse words that you don't consider curse words
20) introducing people by their nickname
21) air conditioning
22) midnight snack
23) reading newspaper articles from the end to the beginning
24) using commas, way too much
25) lip biting
26) procrastination
27) pessimism
28) ignorance
29) saying "you too" at inappropriate moments, like when a waiter says "enjoy your meal" or a friend says "feel better"
30) staring blankly into space

five things that you don't want to be

1) inside-out
2) putting baby in a corner
3) an enabler
4) redundant
5) redundant

October PhiLinks

1) if you love charts and hate the election, then this may be interesting. Or it may not.
2) screw obama and mccain, lets bring back LBJ
3) paper cutouts... why didn't I think of that?
4) carfun footprint calculator
5) get lost in photoshop genius. inspiring gig posters.
6) just in case you're feeling too loved today, there's this to bring you down a peg or two, or five.
7) random . generators . are . fun
8) free
9) Spidee

the end... 'till november

five phrases I don't want to hear in the media again for a long long time

Because they make me dread something that I have no very little control over

1) "just a heartbeat away"
2) "bailout"
3) "gotcha _______"
4) "recession"
5) "hockey mom"