1910-2005

you know, my great-grandma frieda was a damn cool lady. i wish she didn't have to go.

biomusicology

so, wow, i guess a lot has happened since i last posted. i had an insanely busy week last week and my commitment to update more often suffered as a result. here's a quick rundown of last week:

monday: jonathan richman at the 9:30 club. he was absolutely precious and i was positively beaming through the whole show.
tuesday: hmm, something. i'm sure i did something but i just don't remember. (if you are the person i hung out with on tuesday, i'm sorry.)
wednesday: dinner out with the office (sans boss, of course!) at logan tavern then drinks at this awesome bar called the brickskeller, which has the world's largest selection of beers (over 1,000 types on the menu).
thursday: ted leo! goddamn, was that a spectacular show. since the show, i've been unable to listen to anything else. soon my poor ipod will have "ted leo/pharmacists" permanently emblazoned onto its tiny helpless screen. do they make ipod screensavers? anyway, before the show, chris and helen and i had some awesome ethiopian food at a place called dukem and, while there, we were given some little wet-nap things that were truly hilarious. here is what we found on the back of the package (bear in mind, this is all in caps, but i can't bring myself to force that sort of visual assault on you, dear reader):

"Refreshing fresh nap moist towelette: A very strong napkin-size towelette saturated with a pleasantly scented cleansing lotion. cleans and refreshes hands and face without soap or water, self dries in seconds. leaves skin soft and smooth. directions: just tear open packet and use."

now i ask you: have you ever encountered a more heartwarming moist towelette package? my favorite part is the whole "directions: use" thing, and i love the overly flowery language in general. also, in case you were wondering, chris actually used the wet-nap (unlike helen and i, who tucked the packages away for blogging purposes) and according to him the cleansing lotion was not particularly pleasant-smelling, nor did it leave his skin soft and smooth. you win some, you lose some.

then, on friday, i went to a nationals game with mike degroot, and it freaking rocked. before the game there were some parachuters from the command exhibition parachute team, which was pretty sweet (even though i was terrified and clutching mike's arm half the time, squinting through half-covered eyes), then the nationals won. also, it turns out that bush and condoleezza rice were there, which we didn't know until the next day when we read the article about the game.

man, this post is forever long. i'll post again tomorrow about my weekend, which was pretty fantastic too. i hope you guys all know that i love you a lot (unless you're a stranger who has somehow happened upon my site, in which case i probably don't love you just yet) even though i'm sort of a bad communicator. be good.

stretch out your weary hand to me

ted leo + pharmacists tonight. soooo exciting! i have recently discovered that ted leo, in addition to being a stellar musician, is a major dish.

also, the club where ted leo is playing happens to be down the street from some of the most wicked fine ethiopian food in dc, and i'm gonna get me some of that.

okay, concert time!

peter does something stupid, then you drink.

so, i haven't updated in a while - sorry to those who had previously relied on my daily misadventures and witticisms for support. i'll try to do better from now on.

it's been a relatively uneventful few weeks, really, since i got back from texas. job is the same, apartment is the same, life is the same in general. i have a few new coworkers (interns) who have livened up the office quite a bit, so that's always good. man, i am so boring.

today mike degroot gave me an unbelievably wonderful (and quite belated) housewarming gift: the official family guy drinking game pint glass. that mike - what a gem.

also, shows i will attend this week: jonathan richman, ted leo + pharmacists, and sleater-kinney. it will be like three little slices of heaven.

in closing, the rushmore soundtrack is the perfect domino-playing music. cute.

now this is just sad.

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white house announces merger with exxon mobil

you know, you'd think that one of these days i would stop being surprised.

the guy who quit as chief of staff for bush's environmental policy council after it came out that he had edited the global warming reports was just hired by exxon mobil.

fear not the root canal

it has been decided: everyone should forthwith cease to be afraid of root canals. seriously, i had one this morning, and it doesn't hurt at all. it stayed novocaine-numbed until about an hour ago, and i was worried that it would totally kill after it wore off - it doesn't though. but while my tooth doesn't hurt, 2 other things do: 1) my pride, because i still cannot get over the fact that i didn't have a single cavity until age 23 and now i've had a root canal and 2) my wallet, because this bitch root canal is going to cost me $1000. can you imagine? $1000? luckily my parents are awesome and are fronting me the money until i can pay them back (by the end of the summer, i've decided) because otherwise i would be totally screwed.

also, as bogdan would say, smoke this shit: morgan spurlock, the guy who did supersize me, is doing a reality show called 30 days, which i originally thought would be really stupid but now i think it will be really really cool because he's going to use the show as sort of a platform for social issues...for the pilot episode, he and his fiancee are going to move to columbus, OH and try to live on minimum wage, find jobs, affordable housing, etc - sort of like nickel and dimed i guess.

anyway, next tuesday, the center for american progress is going to have a special screening of the pilot episode, featuring a panel discussion with morgan spurlock, ted kennedy, and john podesta. for those of you who don't know, john podesta is a knox alum, so i plan on wearing lots of knox regalia and begging for a job.

and speaking of begging for a job, check out this article and this picture of dan lieberman's brilliant commencement stunt.

i'm ordering the dvd.

tales of canterbury

oh right, one more thing that i forgot to mention. while i was in austin i sort of-kind of got invited into a PhD program at the university of kent in canterbury. righteous, right? i guess the evolutionary psych guy there is going to be collaborating with frank on some research, and frank mentioned that i was shopping around for grad schools, and the guy had apparently seen me in berlin last year and said "give her my card, i'd love to have her." so, i mean, canterbury is gorgeous or so i've heard, and ruth says it's not far from london, and also in the uk PhDs only take 3 years (possibly 4 for me though since i don't have a master's yet). i haven't met the other students yet or anything, but so far the only downside i can see here is distance from my family, which i find really hard to handle even here in dc. but, you know, at the very least i'll get an all-expenses-paid trip to canterbury when i visit the campus, even if i don't decide to go there.

anybody have any grad-school-in-europe advice, or even spending-a-few-years-in-europe advice? issues i haven't considered yet?

greg, boner, and wingman: 112 hours in texas

so, carin and i just got back from hbes in austin, and damn what a party. i have a few stories, and i'll use bullets because, well, i just got back from an academic conference and i have powerpoint on the brain.

-the title: on friday night, carin and i and our fucking awesome new friend greg went out dancing, and this guy from the conference who had the hots for carin kept trying to dance with her, and he had brought along a guy who was clearly supposed to be the wingman but who was very confused about his duties. obviously the job of the wingman is to dance with the friend of the girl that his friend wants to dance with, so that i would be distracted from protecting carin when this guy started bumping and grinding. well, the wingman was a moron and couldn't handle it, so every time the guy started trying to dance with carin, i'd go over and start dancing with her too, but despite my intervention, the guy was successful in rubbing his disgusting boner all over carin while they were dancing. ew. so, later, carin was telling a story, and she said "so then i walked out of the bathroom and i saw greg, boner, and wingman..." and i thought "goddamn, that might be the best phrase ever."

-the conference: fantastic. hbes is the conference where i presented my thesis last year in berlin, and i just really love it. there were all kinds of insanely famous ev psych people there like david buss, steven pinker, sarah hrdy, etc and they were all just sort of milling around.

-austin: i'd never been there before, and i thought it kicked ass. granted, we went to the same bar three nights in a row, but it was a kickass bar, and we had hard-core dance parties. over the course of three nights, i managed to rock a bracelet off my wrist, an earring out of my ear, a toe out the end of my shoe, and my knee totally out of its intended anatomical position.

-etc: so, we were in a session about taking a darwinian approach to literary theory, and steven pinker was there because he's a linguist, and one of the presenters in that session was sort of attacking pinker's theory. so, there was a fiction writer talking about the impact of ev psych on fiction writing, and during the q&a session, this one guy, whose affiliation was some korean university, raised his hand and said "well, i don't want to ask a question so much as i want to ask for career advice - you see, i've written several psychology books in my native korea - well, i guess you could say that i'm known as the steven pinker of korea." steven pinker's eyebrows shot up, and a few people in the room sort of giggled. the guy ended up saying "well, now they want me to write fiction books. do you think i should?" the presenter was just kind of like, "well, um, sure."

okay, i guess that's all i'll write. carin's going to do a major day-by-day breakdown on smoted so i'll tell more stories over there.