So I played M:tG with Jaime for the first time last night. I think we both went through all our decks with the exception of my “Palinbeat” blue/green. I slaughtered him most of the time, but his souped-up white pre-con (with two Pentarch Paladins and oodles of flanking) was pretty formidable. And he has a red/white (with a tiny bit of green) that’s really cool — it’s kind of a denial deck that mostly revolves around a Dingus Staff + Humility + various burn spells combo (Pyroclasm works well). Apparently he’s from Pasco too. Small world, huh?

Rant is getting really good. I’m surprised at how science-fictiony it is; kind of unusual for Palahniuk. I really like the Nighttimer and boosting/out-cording elements, but Party Crashing (a game that takes place on city streets on certain nights where drivers of “flagged” cars stalk each other, trying to gently ram opponents) doesn’t seem all that interesting to me. I mean the esoteric-ness and subculture details are interesting, but it’s not really on the same level as Project Mayhem, quaint New England island sacrifices, or even collecting vampire furniture. (Bonus points to anyone who understands all those references.)

I made a pretty boss dinner last night. We started with a very basic salad (honey mustard vinagrette, hearts of romaine, four-cheese croutons, and parmesan) and some store-bought Seattle rolls (which were better than I expected them to be).

I also had some of this Pom Pomegranate Black Tea. This is my new favorite drink. It tastes fantastic (not overly-sweet like the vast majority of bottled iced teas) and it’s packaged in such a way that, after opening it, you’re left with a pretty drinking glass. Awesome idea.

And finally, the pièce de résistance: Pork ribs. You know IGA had these for only $10? I love pork ribs. The last time I made some, I used a recipe that called for 45 minutes of boiling, then another 45 minutes in the oven baking. This time I was kind of lazy. I’d planned to actually barbeque them, but it was raining really hard. So I just seasoned both sides of the rack, doused it with Longhorn BBQ sauce (and a little honey), and baked at 350° for 60 minutes (flipping ‘em halfway through). Came out great though — I don’t know why anyone bothers boiling them.

Ooh! I just got an email reply from Paige. She’s working at this store in Bellingham called Daiso, which sounds pretty cool. If I remember what Jones told me, it’s kind of like a Japanese ShopKo, but with more focus on toys and snacks. I might be off about that since it was a while ago. Anyway, apparently she’s following the IMBC and playing a lot of Kirby’s Adventure on the Wii. I fully endorse both endeavors. She also mentioned possibly participating in next year’s IMBC which I think would be extremely stellar. This is my fantasy: Getting all my friends, especially the ones in far-away places like Bellingham, Los Angeles, and Orlando, to blog regularly.

Okay, gotta start on this paper… I have write about some form of “border politics” (which doesn’t have to do with actual borders, apparently) in APA style and supply a bibliography with five peer reviewed journal articles. Have I mentioned how much I hate this English class?

Argh, I have to get this blogging thing out of the way post-haste; Jaime’s coming over to play Magic in a little bit. I thought about chancing it and waiting till eleven or so to come type stuff, but that would be rude to a new guest — “Hold on, can you sit here and watch TV for a half-hour while I go ramble about crap on the interweb? Thanks.”

Peter (ungsunghero) found this really awesome fansite for The Office. Via it, I found this keen mini-mockumentary about life as a modern zombie (starring Ed Helms). The embedded player they use at Funny or Die is kind of wonky on my system. Maybe just because I use Opera. The video was very choppy (like 4 frames/second) until it finished downloading completely, and then it started playing smoothly.

There’s a rather lively post/thread on MetaFilter about the science in science fiction. I was reading through it and noticed that one user’s real name is Charles Stross. I kept thinking, “Why does that sound familiar?” After thinking that over for a day I realized it’s because I added one of his books, Accelerando, to my Amazon Wishlist a while back. Heh, weird coincidence, huh? For some reason I never really expect to see authors on web forums and the like. Well, GURPS people excluded — David Pulver and Phil Masters have been very active on various message boards, mailing lists, and the like.

Still playing Quadradius. The randomness of it is kind of frustrating though; if your opponent can control a larger area, they’ll usually win just by having better access to power-ups. But nothing’s certain; I was wiped out by one guy with a score of 14-5 (my favor) because he nabbed a couple Grow Quadradials, a Relocate, and an Acid Row.

TotD:

What is the value of a viable human embryo?

I’ve been thinking about this and I believe the value can only be expressed as it relates to other difficult-to-price items. In this case, it’s obviously worth less than a living fetus, but more than, maybe, a transplantable kidney. Or less than a near-sapient animal (like a signing gorilla), but more than a brain dead coma victim. I think it’d be interesting for someone to establish an absolute hierarchy of “person-ness” for the purpose of making laws and deciding the severity of crimes. I dunno, is that too callous? It’d be useful for sure.

I think I had a better response thought out, but I must’ve forgotten it. Anyway, kind of in a hurry — GTG.

Well it’s official: To succeed in English classes at WSU, you must be a rabid feminist who believes even the slightest hints of racism or homophobia are worse than murder. Or, at least, you must be able to fake such sentiments. Which may include pretending to support delirious outrage at the fact that a frat guy showed up to a 1994 campus Halloween party in blackface. You know, there was a time when I would have not believed that anyone would seriously compare that kind of thoughtless faux pas to the holocaust.

Somehow in today’s class the subject of reservations came up. The teacher informed me that native Americans whose parents were from different tribes and whose grandparents were from different tribes (still with me?) cannot lay claim to land on reservations because of their “diluted” lineage. I asked her if people should really be entitled to things just because their ancestors were treated badly. She paused and glared. Then she nearly screamed at me, “I think five million deaths entitles them to a lot!” This is when I realized that expressing anything outside the party line might adversely affect my grade.

When I got home today I watched a little television and read a dozen chapters of Rant. There were numerous passages I really liked, like the bit about how prairie-dogs came to carry the plague and Sheriff Carlyle’s “love is a muscle” chestnut, but I found this excerpt (from pp. 61-62) especially adroit:

By first believing in Santa Claus, then the Easter Bunny, then the Tooth Fairy, Rant Casey was recognizing that those myths are more than pretty stories and traditions to delight children. Or to modify behavior. Each of those three traditions asks a child to believe in the impossible in exchange for a reward. These are stepped-up tests to build a child’s faith and imagination. The first test is to believe in a magical person, with toys as the reward. The second test is to trust in a magical animal, with candy as the reward. The last test is the most difficult, with the most abstract reward: To believe, trust in a flying fairy that will leave money.
From a man to an animal to a fairy.
From toys to candy to money. Thus, interestingly enough, transferring the magic of faith and trust from sparkling fairy-dom to clumsy, tarnished coins. From gossamer wings to nickels … dimes … and quarters.
In this way, a child is stepped up to greater feats if imagination and faith as he or she matures. Beginning with Santa in infancy, and ending with the Tooth Fairy as the child acquires adult teeth. Or, plainly put, beginning with all the possibility of childhood, and ending with an absolute trust in the national currency.

Last night I made chicken salad sandwiches for dinner. Cameo apples, red seedless grapes, focaccia bread. This picture isn’t very good, but I assure you they were delicious.

I just finished my fourth game of Quadradius. The basic premise seems to be “checkers with power-ups” (though that’s slightly misleading). Sounds kind of dumb, right? I thought so too, but after struggling through a couple games, reading the tips, and watching the video instructions, I changed my mind; if you give it a chance it can be extremely fun. Guests can play games just fine as much as they like, but members get a few perks: Access to new power-ups, scoreboard placement, and a ranking system (which creates a disincentive for people to leave games or resign early). Lifetime membership is only $14.95 — I might get one if I still enjoy the it after a couple dozen more rounds.

It occurred to me that this game would be pretty cool as a real life board game. A few things wouldn’t translate well (the Snake Tunnelling ability, for example), but with a few tweaks it could work. Three- and four-player versions would be interesting.

I heard a really catchy song on NPR today. All I could remember was that it was a cover of a song from The Godfather and it was by some jazz/blues/soul guy. After a little googling, I found the title and artist: Love Theme from The Godfather by Chuck Brown. And OiNK, serendipitously enough, had the track’s album in FLAC format. Good thing µTorrent lets you download only parts of torrents — FLACs are huge. (Why does anyone need lossless audio anyway? Can anyone really hear the imperfections in 320 kbps MP3s?)

I started reading Chuck Palahniuk’s Rant last night. Really liking it so far. The “oral biography” style is a little rougher to read through, but I assume he used it for a good reason. I don’t quite see the (non-obvious) significance of the day/night icons yet.

I got a new high score in Wii Sports bowling this afternoon. Check it out:

Oh yeah, and here’s that ghetto circuit board I mentioned (the one Jake and I made for the X-ray machine a couple weeks ago):

I still can’t believe it worked.

Man, I hate college. The bureacracy, the inefficiency, the obssession with (arbitrary) legitimacy. But I especially dislike that they don’t teach me what I really want to learn. Or rather, that they force me to slog through subjects and issues I don’t care about (and have no use for) to get to the few things I’m actually interested in hearing lectures about. An entire semester of 20th Century Literature, and what did I get out of it? Mostly that white people should feel guilty. Oh, and a loathing for authors that can’t get to the point. Taking advantage of other cultures just because they’re handicapped by technology, language, and/or their system of organization is wrong — I get that. But is it really so imperative that I be fed that lesson over and over again through different metaphors and perspectives?

That whole course was wasted time to me. Okay, maybe ten years from now someone will say something witty about Toni Morrison and I’ll be able to laugh politely. Yeah, that was really worth a thousand pages of boring crap and forty dull lectures.

I wish I could just hire private tutors, ordinary people even — not career professors, to teach me about subjects I’m interested in. I bet that’s what aristocrats did in the days before universities. Way better system, if you ask me. The only drawback is that resumés would be a lot longer. Instead of “Bachelor of Arts in Humanities,” you’d have to write “Taught personally by Dave of Spokane in the ways of chemistry and South American history. Received tutelage from Alberto of Topeka on writing short fiction and sonnets…” etc. I think that’d be way more interesting though. In some ways, I dislike what standardization has done to modern education.

Anyway, if you’re wondering what prompted this little homily, I finally got around to registering for summer classes. This involved climbing way too many flights of stairs on my gimpy ankle. About that: My parents offered to pay for me to see a sports medicine doctor here, but I don’t want to go if it’s at all avoidable. The last two doctors I went to were either crazy or incompetent. One, an “allergist” (I say that contemptuously, but he actually had a license), turned out to be one of these healing-power-of-crystals types — thought he could cure people with a back massager; the other, a UW Medicine guy in Seattle, misdiagnosed my strep throat (which led to me suffering through it for more than a month) and charged me $600 to find out that my cholesterol was “okay.” Hopefully this goes some way to explaining my reluctance to help another quack swindle my mom and dad.

One of my summer classes has already started; I have to get over to to the CUE building tomorrow at 10:30 AM. The others start in June and July.

Have you seen Akon’s Mr. Lonely music video? It’s actually pretty good. I guess I’m like two years late on this, but I wanted to mention it anyway.

My sister left for the Tri-Cities today. This is the last summer she’s spending back at home. She bought me and Brett pizza before she took off — that was pretty nice of her.

Once again, I’ll conclude with some 4chan goodness. See you tomorrow.

Update: I was talking about my education argument with Brett and I thought of a better way to summarize my opinions: Education should be a free market system designed to serve the student as a consumer. If the traditions and subsidies and attached regulations were thrown out the window, I think we’d see efficient, highly customizable methods of instruction spring up. People would learn more faster and be more satisfied with the experience. Too bad it’d require some kind of massive revolution or radical changes in law to be successful on a wide scale.

Last night I thought of a nonsense phrase that kind of sounded neat in my head. Sort of like a tongue-twister, but not made up for that purpose. It just felt satisfying to imagine saying it. Anyway, I started writing it down, then trying variations, playing with alliteration, different patterns, and so on. Most of it was junk, but I liked a few parts. Here’re some of those bits:

Lacy bases can’t switch niches for affected wishes.
Sweetly sung forsooth to try to sing sanguine.
Saunter and canter in winter with lanterns,
Toes that twitch in glitchy, richly pitched kinetics.

Towards the end, part of it told something like a story, but it didn’t have a point — it just described a couple guys running through a swamp at night. But there were three lines from that section that I thought were nice:

Torvald stumbles numbly, too humble, too rumbly, he mumbles:
“Waxing wounds paint perfect pictures of petty nurses,
hearken you to fettered hearses!”

I wouldn’t call this stuff poetry, but I like the forms I imagine my mouth making when I read them.

I started making notes on a couple new Magic decks. One’s a red/white that revolves around Barren Glory. The other’s a blue/red that milks the “strobe” sorceries for all they’re worth.

Today’s TotD isn’t one that I’m eager to address. “What are your best qualities?” It’s hard to answer that question without coming off egocentric. Plus it’s the kind of thing you get asked in a job interview or in a small class with one of those kinds of teachers. I.e., the person asking thinks they’re doing something productive, but it really only generates discomfort. As if the responses are typically accurate anyhow.

We’re having a big thunderstorm right now. Brett and I were driving back from Moscow and the cloud-to-cloud bolts were amazing. Really weird part is that it hasn’t rained.

I award this fake O’Reilly cover the title of Funniest Thing Hank Saw on 4chan Today.