i have recently had an important revelation about the future.

flying cars are a terrible idea.

i know that they're supposed to represent the awesome inventions that science has in store for us and the triumph of technology and progress...but have you ever really stopped to think about it for a minute?

i did for the first time yesterday, when i was reflecting on how bad lots of people seem to be at driving their normal, non-flying cars. i've started riding my bike just about everywhere recently; i don't really drive much anymore (and when i do it's only a non-flying car) and riding the bus isn't usually much faster than riding my bike. and it costs money. and it doesn't burn calories. and it sometimes involves standing around outside for a long time.

all this time on my bike has given me a lot of chances to interact with drivers. and many of them are awful at driving. it's really helped me to appreciate the car-free parts of the city—i love the greenways and bike paths that make it possible for me to get places without much car traffic.

but it's also made me realize that we are far from ready for flying cars. can you imagine what it would be like? it's bad enough to have to deal with cars in the same plane as you when you're riding a bike—but from now on, when i have a close call with someone i'll remember: at least they didn't have the opportunity to crowd me from above!

science, i own you an apology. i'm sorry for being disappointed in you for all these years for your failure to produce flying cars. i think you really have our best interests at heart. please don't ever make flying cars happen, ever. teleportation devices, on the other hand, are long overdue.

"heartbeats" by the knife, or covered by josé gonzález: both excellent. happy new year!

"heartbeats" the knife


"heartbeats" josé gonzález

i apologize for the inevitable ad for bp's youtube channel where you can watch lots of pr bs about how they're "making it right." do they really think we're that stupid?

free advice for bp: you "make it right" by actually making it right, not by spending millions of dollars on a media blitz in which you talk about making it right. thanks for ruining everyone's ocean.

bonus video because it is really fun and to avoid ending on a cranky note:


"heartbeats" josé gonzález and a lot of bouncy balls in san francisco.

open office has a superior sense of the absurd, or at least a very weird spellcheck matching formula.

while unpacking a box tonight i found a list i started of bizarre open office spellcheck suggestions. at one time in my life i was trying to write papers for school using open office since i didn't have a copy of word. this actually turned out to be rather difficult; classmates couldn't open my attachments, i didn't have powerpoint, formatting was nearly impossible, and there was an exciting "crash for no good reason and don't save any changes" feature.

i hear that open office has gotten a lot more stable and user friendly these days, and i realize that free software has certain tradeoffs and i should be appreciative of what was available to me, but one night i was up really late working hard on a paper and i started to feel like spellcheck was messing with me on purpose.

this was the order in which spellcheck suggested these words. and i feel i should mention that each of these words were completely unrelated to the actual word i'd misspelled (or the term with which the open office dictionary was not acquainted)—like completely unrelated. like none of the same letters, and nothing approaching the same number of letters:

suboptimal (okay, that's a reasonable word at least)
buttermilk (funny because it's random)
electroencephalographic (what?)
parallelepiped (i give up.)

wisdom from b.f.h.

i just received the following text message:

"I've learned the hard way that there is no cure for glitter herpes, all I can do is manage the outbreak."

ordinary conversations between children and their parents become funny when roles are reversed.

walking home tonight, a friend and i passed a book store display. she pointed out the box of mad libs, and then behind us we heard the following exchange:

dad: "ooh! mad libs!"
kid: "you already have those at home."
dad: "but these are on sale!"
kid: "ugh."

belated happy blogday present

so it appears that i missed c.w.a.j.a.?.'s blogday by six days. i'm a negligent blogger, sorry. but don't worry, c.w.a.j.a.?. i got you a present. i'm pretty sure this is the best picture on the internet right now.

i would like to give credit to whomever made this masterpiece of internet caption art, but since there are 250,000 search results for just watering the owl i don't think that's possible. thank you, mysterious internet caption art master. thank you all the same.

and thanks to you, dear reader, for reading and for commenting. this is still fun.

"MOST CAREERS PAY MONEY." (i love xtranormal bike videos!)

"amy and steevo discuss thanksgiving"

oddly poetic spam

it has been a long time since i really paid much attention to my spam folder, but very recently i've taken over a class right before their final (a situation somewhat akin to adopting a 17 1/2 year old) and i wanted to be sure that i didn't miss any messages from students.

so i was scrolling through all the offers for various drugs related to my manhood, and i saw this subject like: "halifax census antiquarian"

it seemed pretty enough to share with you all, but you're on your own if you're searching for v|aagr.a.

sorry.

earworm alert! or: that's really the only way to wish someone the best.

cee lo green, "forget you"


cee lo green, "f*** you"

this song is stuck in my head most of the time these days (both versions, in case you were curious.) i thought i'd share the catchiness with you too. also, as a special bonus:


gwyneth paltrow on glee, "forget you"

what is cyclocross?

i'm so glad you asked. i could tell you about it, but you'd enjoy reading this comic book-style explanation even more. check it out!

because i really like xtranormal movies about cycling

your math joke for today:

via icanhascheezburger, fibonacci pigeons. i'm pretty sure this is the san leandro bart station. they've got a lot of pigeons there, but sometimes there are dead ones stuck inside the anti-pigeon netting and i don't like that at all.

hooray! cyclocross season is here!

"i like your kit"

yesterday was our team cross clinic, and today i definitely feel it. getting skinsuits on friday!

micmacs is a fantastic movie and you should probably see it soon

captain awesome and i went to the movies the other night and thoroughly enjoyed micmacs. its french title is Micmacs à tire-larigot, which according to the internet means "non-stop shenanigans," and that seems like a pretty concise summary of the movie.

it was directed by jean-pierre jeunet, who also directed amelie, and it is similarly whimsical and many lovely colors of brown. (jeunet also directed a very long engagement, which is like amelie, right down to the audrey tautou but very sad; i would not necessarily recommend it to a friend unless that friend was in the mood for a movie that is depressing and beautiful.)

micmacs. check it out.

"and bars of gold, platinum or titanium."

oh, freecycle.

"We are in need of a various items: Used Rice Cooker, PlayStation3 or Roku streamly digital DVD player,tv tuner, wireless router,used laptop who are in good conditions. If anyone has any of those and not in need we will appreciate it. Thanks."

i wish i had written down who said this.

i'm getting rid of lots of paper clutter these days (woo!) and when going through a box just now i found a somewhat cryptic note. i have a dim recollection of someone saying this, but since the date at the top of the note is 8/06 i am not particularly surprised or disappointed that i don't actually remember the exact wording or who said it. something like:

so this supercollider that's going to end the world, this is my kind of disaster! not even bottled water can save you!

this seems like as good a time as any to remind you of the hugely useful site "Has the Large Hadron Collider destroyed the world yet?"

the antidote to those awesome/horrifying big dog/little dog videos

(50X) Autonomously folding a pile of 5 previously-unseen towels


while i know that robotics technology generally boils down to military-related applications, it's kind of cute to see this robot folding laundry.

also, the highest rated comment insults naysayers by quoting murray head's "one night in bangkok," which wikipedia calls "a sarcastic, tongue-in-cheek denunciation of the city's moral corruption and comparative glorification of the intellectual purity of chess: e.g., 'the queens we use would not excite you.'" "one night in bangkok" is also notable for being the last show tune to make into the top five most popular american songs. and it is from a musical about a chess match between an american and a soviet chess player. the 80's were really a different time. seriously.


one night in bangkok

the unbearable sadness of freecycle

it is not always hilarious.

"several cat items, including unopened box of arm/hammer kitty litter, a long-term watering system (not auto), and some other items. belonged to my cat but moved out with the ex a while ago. Please take all."

emphasis on the heartbreaking part added by me.

somebody had better pick up this cat stuff soon!

let her in!

a dream comes to fruition. in blog form. check it out.

freecycle is also good for free entertainment

for a long time, this was the funniest freecycle post i've seen. then someone sent the following, which cracked me up for a few weeks:

"Unopened 2.2 pound bag of wasabi: It says "Super Hot" on the package"

this was surely about a boy, but it was a year and a half ago and consequently i have no clue who audra was talking about or what it means*

"it may be overbaked, but it's not overbaked enough."

-audra

*i am, however, confident that it was good advice at the time.

sometimes audra quotes are even funnier when i write them down and then put the sticky note somewhere and then forget about it.

me: "there are some boobies. wanna see it?"

audra: "OMG boobies. i'm offended by boobies. i have two of my own."

[i have no idea what i was talking about.]

we have solved the beer waste problem that occasionally accompanies beer handups. you're welcome.

"hand up, hand down"

"it's connecticut for lieberman, not vice versa."

careful readers of c.w.a.j.a.?. will remember that joe lieberman is among my least favorite politicians in the history of ever. and, as you might also recall, i'm pretty impatient with the lack of affordable health care in this country. lieberman is one of the jackasses who's really holding things up. today, however, i watched a video that explains things pretty well:


joe lieberman sucks.

professors say the darndest things

one thing i will miss about this semester: having a class with the professor who explained, "david harvey? david harvey is like YODA."