christmas in april

okay, so the coolest thing happened to me yesterday. i was talking to frank mcandrew about some random evolutionary psych thought that had popped into my head, and i suddenly realized that last june before i presented my thesis in germany, i joined HBES (human behavior & evolution society) and paid for a 2 year membership, which is supposed to include a subscription to Evolution & Human Behavior, a completely excellent journal. (so excellent, in fact, that they stone cold rejected my thesis.) so anyway, i emailed the membership guy, forwarded him my membership confirmation email, and he said "oops. i guess next week you're going to get a rather large package in the mail." so, next week, i'm going to get 10 issues of Evolution & Human Behavior in the mail. it will, i predict, be the happiest day of my life. i also predict that i will call in sick to work all week and just lounge happily in bed all day long reading about mate selection and mismatch theory.

also, for carin and/or bogdan: what's the name of the theory that states that we don't want to mate with our brothers and sisters because there's a mechanism by which we aren't attracted to people with whom we spend a large amount of time as children? it's a long name that starts with an M or an H i think...and i can't really look it up because i don't know what it's called. i think it was in the pinker book.

i got a new apartment!

after almost 6 months of living in the drab suburb of fairfax, VA, i will now finally be moving into the actual city of DC!

in honor of my new digs, i've decided to include a little interactivity in this post. go here: this is DC's subway map. now, look all the way over to the left on the orange line: vienna. that's where i live now. (actually, i live a 20 minute bus ride west of vienna.) if you trace the orange line toward the center, eventually you'll come to farragut west, which is where my office is located. trace the orange line a little further and you'll come to federal center SW, slightly east of the city center. that's where my new apartment will be! less than a mile from the national mall, where the washington monument and smithsonian and all that fun stuff is located and, just as importantly, only 6 stops from my office, which is about 8 minutes! so, my commute is going to go from over an hour twice a day to about 20 minutes including walking to and from the metro stations. bad-ass!

also: if you haven't read middlesex by jeffrey eugenides (the second book by the guy who wrote the virgin suicides), you should. it's terrific. one of the most absorbing books i've read in a long time - in the mornings i couldn't wait to get on the train so i could read it.

i guess that's all i have for now.

i'm back

hey guys, sorry for the lull. last wednesday i went home (to indiana) for the NCAA march madness tournament - it's a big deal in our family. everybody takes vacation time off of work and we all just sit on our asses and eat wings and watch basketball for 4 straight days. it's a little slice of heaven - but the weird thing is that i really don't even consider myself a basketball fan. often, march madness is literally the only basketball i watch all season. but there's something about sitting in my parents' living room with my dad and brother and brother's friends and watching the games on my dad's 55" big screen that makes me really happy. it also makes me really happy when i fill out my bracket based solely on guessing and intuition and WIN, as i did last year. it makes my brother furious and it's hilarious. take that, big brother! also, long-standing as our march madness tradition is, last week i became the first turner ever to fly home just for the event.

since i got back my life has been a flurry of catching up on work. my boss has reached new heights of horribleness - yesterday she threw a tantrum in a meeting and literally stomped her foot. she was trying to describe why we should do some totally pointless thing that would take up time for no reason, and every time one of us tried to explain why it wasn't necessary, she would interrupt us and start whining and acting like a 3 year old and at one point she squealed, "but nobody's listening to me!!" and stomped her foot. i was stunned, though in retrospect i really shouldn't have been. then after that was over (after the office was more or less forced to give in to her whining) she asked how the grant writing workshop i went to was (a question i wasn't expecting), and i started out with "well, you know, it was really great" while i was trying to gather my thoughts and she interrupted my first sentence to snap, "it was great? could you maybe be a little more specific? great doesn't tell me anything."

so, yeah, she totally sucks.

umm, other than work, life is good...oh, here's some randomness that you may have read on somebody else's blog by now. on tuesday night, my first night back from home, i went out for drinks at the brickskellar with mike degroot, and while we were there we ran into a whole group of knox people - helen scharber, agnes csicsai (who is now married but i don't know her new name), kelsey keyes, alison chiblooney, and susie stone. insane! helen and agnes live in (or around) DC but the rest of them were just visiting, and I didn't know they were even in town. so, we moved over to their table and had a random little knox reunion. it was lovely.

so, i guess now that i've appeased the update gods, i should get back to work.

a new buzzword: spotcasting

so, my friend Tim Jones from the dean campaign is now working for a wicked cool tech company called EchoDitto and right now he's in Austin TX covering the south by southwest/sxsw interactive festival, which he refers to as "the most gigantor geekfest in the world, ever." anyway, he made up a new form of podcast called a spotcast, which is a podcast that's less than 60 seconds long. i think he's a genius. listen for yourself.

voyeurism at its best

my new favorite website:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/whatsinyourbag/

why is this so entertaining? it's just pictures of what people are carrying around in their bags. but it's captivating!

some movies i've watched

so, since i don't have anything exciting to talk about, maybe i'll talk about the movies i've watched this week.

i heart huckabees: i really haven't formed an opinion of this one yet. parts of it were very funny and parts were intriguing and overall it was very well-done, but...i just didn't love it. i don't know. mark wahlberg was fucking masterful though.

before sunrise: i only watched this one so that i could watch the sequel, before sunset, because i heard it was much better than the first. so i decided to suffer through the first one - and suffer i did! ethan hawke and julie delpy were both so obnoxious. julie delpy slightly less so i guess - ethan hawke was just a disaster. i mean, he couldn't have been more...bland. just not remarkable or interesting in any way. i mean, this is a very cool concept for a movie i think, and i think that most of us have had a very intense experience like the one they have - but there's just absolutely zero chemistry and they're both boring as hell. boo. anyway, i'm watching the sequel tonight.

bad education (la mala educacion): this one was great. it was directed by Pedro Almodovar, who directed Talk to Her (Hable con Ella), and it was so interesting. i just loved it. it was rated NC-17, which i guess i really don't understand. way less graphic than some R movies i've seen, but since the main characters were gay, i guess that made it more risque somehow. but anyway, it was a great story, well-written and well-acted and i just really liked it.

how about you guys? netflix treating you as well as it's treating me?

a way to be good again

so, i read The Kite Runner this week and it was incredible. (the title of this post is from the book.) i mean, seriously it's a fantastic book. the writing is fantastic, and the story is gut-wrenching. i don't mind telling you that i wept openly on the subway while reading this book. so, read it. i'm serious. even if you weren't such a big fan of one hundred years of solitude (bogdan!), you will really dig this book.

so, let's see...oh, gym crush update. so, i was telling my coworker mark about how this guy talked to me on friday (he wasn't there to see it) and he totally didn't believe me at all that the gorgeous object of my affections had started talking to me out of the blue. but yesterday, we were working out, and hottie mc-hipster glasses sauntered by, and he smiled and waved at me, and mark's jaw practically hit the floor. he was like, now that's what i call progress! step 2: learn his name. step 3: spring wedding.

today's new music: turin brakes

welcome to the dc nationals

sidparadise81 (1:12:53 AM): the dc nationals.
sidparadise81 (1:13:02 AM): formerly the montreal expos.
I am Abrasive (1:13:16 AM): hehe
I am Abrasive (1:13:20 AM): you stole them from canada?
I am Abrasive (1:13:28 AM): just like prescription drugs
sidparadise81 (1:13:28 AM): yep.
sidparadise81 (1:13:59 AM): the bible is clear on this one, neil: baseball teams may be imported from canada, prescription drugs may not.
I am Abrasive (1:15:03 AM): what about the drugs used by the baseball team?
sidparadise81 (1:15:43 AM): well, as long as the poverty-stricken elderly will not directly benefit, then that's okay.
I am Abrasive (1:16:00 AM): ok
I am Abrasive (1:16:01 AM): whew

what a useless article!

i just ran across an article that i think really exemplifies the total degeneration of the media. here you can find an article about the debate surrouding jada pinkett smith's comments at the harvard foundation's cultural rhythms show. apparently the comments were offensive to the GLBT community, and the article presents both sides of the debate, including quotes from people who either approved or disapproved - but never presents her actual comments! i mean, i understand that this is a very minute issue, and that the media has no responsibility to inform us of every word that comes out of jada pinkett's mouth, but isn't it a little silly to write an entire article about the controversy surrounding her comments without just coming out and saying what her comments were?

it's a perfect example of how modern media coverage has become more about controversy than about substance - like the swift boat veterans for truth ads last year. so much more time was spent talking about the fact that there were two conflicting accounts than actually discussing what those two accounts were, or whose account actually had official military paperwork backing it up. how annoying!

i need a new blog title

hey guys. i have to share this really disturbing news that i just learned that you guys all probably know. i'm sure that everyone knows about the whole woody allen and soon-yi thing, but i didn't know all the details until this week. i mean, i knew that soon-yi was woody allen's step-daughter, but i guess i assumed that she was, like, an adult when woody allen married her mom (mia farrow), then they became involved. which is weird enough, right? but i found out last week that she was only SIX when woody allen married her mom! SIX! so, like, he was really, totally, completely her dad for most of her life. and then, when she was around 20, they got married. and now they have adopted two daughters! i mean, i don't want to be creepy here, but if at age 20 you marry the guy who has been your dad since you were six, don't you think there's a chance that there was some inappropriate behavior while she was still young? and if so, and since he's the only dad she's ever had, perhaps she doesn't have a good concept of what sort of behavior is appropriate between fathers and daughters and what isn't?

ugh. sorry to have two male-bashing posts in a row. i'm really not a man-hater. but if i didn't love men in general so much, examples of horrible men wouldn't bother me so much.

remember my laudatory comments about gabriel garcia marquez, author of One Hundred Years of Solitude? That oughta even the score.