days of my life

Gosh today really sucked, and I’m not sure why. It’s like I’m living life but it’s passing me by and I’m not sure why. I’m just glad I have my friends, they’re like my support network when all of this social and relashionship crap hits the fan. Like yesterday, I was in lab and I had this reaction and I was jumping around because my quantum dots finally were labeled correctly, and then of course it was a false result and that like blows. And then my boss gave me this nasty look, and I just couldn’t deal so I went home without saying goodbye. And like today, in class, Sam says, “Hey, are you feeling alright?” And I’m just thinking – what’s that supposed to mean? Do I look like crap today? Is my face doing alright for you, Sam? My shirt has a stain on it already, and I look fat in it. I think everyone in my class thinks I’m shy and removed, but its really that I can only deal with these pretencious screwballs in small servings. I’m just glad that I can zone all of these people out and listen to Death Cab and Postal Service on my U2 iPod. OMG, it’s so great, I can’t stop listening the album with “Beautiful Day” on it – sometimes I mouth the words when no one’s looking. And then when Death Cab gets boring, there’s always the Postal Service. I’m thinking of buying the Garden State soundtrack because I hear it’s really uplifting, but maybe it’s too trendy? I don’t know, Gideon Yago said it was really great in his blog. Anyhow, so yeah, today was just really kind of a downer, I’m just glad I have my friends. You guys rock. Let’s go to the Bahamas together for Spring Break! Yeah!!
PS) I’m beginnging to think you guys don’t read this anymore, so comment so I know you still read, ok?

history lesson, and some belated indignance

Growing up, there were shows that were off limits – Married with Children, 90210, and until such things became irrelevant (read: college), movies above PG were also off limits. This isn’t unexpected, it’s America the way Joe Lieberman sees it, where parents guard their children from breasts and such. So, when I went to go see “Dumb and Dumber,” I covered it up by saying I had watched “D2: The Mighty Ducks II.” This too should not be surprising, as kids do that, and I had to compete with other kids with less restrictive parents.

I remember a guy in 3rd grade bragging about seeing Roseanne Barr in the buff in some movie. And let’s face it – our only salient memories tend to be our anxieties, so clearly I was anxious to break the PG barrier.

So the relevance of all this comes back to an aspect of my Thanksgiving that I haven’t yet shared. Being a kid who would stifle laughs at sitcom jokes about self-flagellation is one thing. But this Thanksgiving, we were all set to watch “Alexander” as a family, when my parents noticed it was rated R. Now, I’m 22, and they’re profanely ancient. Wouldn’t it just be nice to implicitly assume I know a little something about female anatomy and uses thereof? Instead, what happens? We all fumble towards “The Incredibles” in eager avoidance of the awkwardness that is a generational gap.

In fact, the only time we, as a family, have tripped into salacious territory was for that brief moment of erudite nudity in “Titanic.” Mind you, these are also the parents that watched “Something About Mary,” that find “Beavis & Butthead” funny, and that watch “Boston Legal” despite its only consistent theme of sexual tension. Guess I didn’t have to look that far to find my own personal example of the Republican mind.

fun with diane & charlie!

Detonating cellphones!

Not totally sure why, but I delight in the news that Wal-Mart is doing poorly this holiday season. Part of us-versus-them, no doubt. Regardless, Wal-Mart blames gas prices, and suddenly I realized that some Harvard-educated economist now needs to find a way to combine the words "gas" and "stagnation."

We need buzzwords, people. The front page these days is full of phrases like "spent fuel rods" or "autonomy initiative" and then there's the last names -- Yanukovich and Yushchenko and that's not even counting the Arabs! I'm just plain sick of the media elite. They don't think of the illiterate. Or maybe they just don't care.

I guess if Gwyneth can take "Apple," Julia can lay claim to "Phinnaeus." And who really cares about this NBC sports guy? I picked such a rotten day to watch TV news...

jude law: less bombshell, more just plain bomb

Jude Law, welcome to the world of Tom Cruise. Sure, you're an A-list celeb. You even have Pat Kingsley as your publicist. Just thank the lord you have an Oscar, Tom never had one of those. But the irrefutable is still the irrefutable: when you cashed your A-list card and made one too many movies for one holiday season to handle, they sucked, you sucked, and even a JLo marriage won't save you now. You're just a junk bond now.

The numbers:
"Sky Captain & The World of Tomorrow" - net loss: $65 million
"I Heart Huckabees" - net loss: $13 million
"Alfie" - net loss: $50 million

So... unless "Closer" makes a net profit of ~$128 million, Jude's screwed. So all of you who clamored to waft essence of Jude at the premiere, you now know what it's like to have the fleeting euphoria of meeting a soon-to-be-has-been.

I entertained changing the title of this blog (zeitgeist is just bulky and not clever) to 'focus on me' but it lacks the umph of 'everyone shut up, i have a thought.'

From the cousin who has, for the record, gotten off of pokemon and is now a G-unit devotee:
cousin: u rite about stuff that barely anyone wants to know about
cousin: whatever man
devdooT: so it wasn't worth it for you, huh?
cousin: no like it's entertaining, but...
cousin: just chill
cousin: u don't gotta criticize errething
devdooT: oh, i'm chill. i swear it

daily smattering (my blog copout)

How 'The Incredibles' is fascist in its thinking. Roommate's mother pointed this out to me -- and I can't really say I'm in disagreement.

"The only solace in life is knowing that you're doing the best that you can in these circumstances that you yourself have sculpted. Devdoot, are you doing the best you can?"

Woke up to that thought. Went to the gym, then to lab. And when the enema of al-anon motivation gave way to laziness, did some blog hunting.

So... bad blogs, fourth in a series:

"It's really cool that Fermilab tapes all their colloquium talks. I wish other universities would do the same. Sure, there are books and papers out there, but nothing beats the experience of listening to another human being tell you something!" --qmengineer

"I think this feeling started Thanksgiving morning. For some reason, this year, the Macy's parade pissed me off a lot more than usual. Are we so past feeling love for our fellow man that we have to spend ooodles and ooodles of cash putting on a spectacle that means absolutely nothing, except to small children? I mean, what if we spent JUST THAT money on the homeless or education?" --profgoose

"Kierkegaard. I will never be the boy who reads Kierkegaard. I will never even be able to correctly pronounce Kierkegaard. This causes me much despair. I want to be him -- I want that "literary arsenal" -- but I can barely scrape past pop literature and books required for classes. This was the sadness that resulted from a long walk I took last night. Why bother even learning that there is a Kierkegaard if it only haunts you for decades until it's too late to apply philosophies to life anyhow?" -- my older blog, 2002

happy thanksgiving

If you’re reading this today, you have a dysfunctional family. You should be watching football with the brother you may not like, but have spent two decades learning to tolerate. You should be helping dad garden, or mom pick out what she wants to buy at the after-Thanksgiving sales. Or cooking, that’s appropriate too. But the only people who truly need to check their email today already have Blackberries. Sad as it might be, my inbox hasn’t exceeded word-of-the-day emails in two days. As for dysfunction, let’s just say that I’ve done Thanksgiving at Denny’s before.

And for those of us with dysfunctional families, oh, think of the memories. Just last year, we were reading drudgereport on this very day and realized that President Bush was pulling a photo op with fake turkeys and yes, soldiers, in Iraq. And then we thought, oh, just wait till next November Bush, just wait. Fool me twice, shame on me.

Sidenote… Along with “insecurity,” the words clearly and evidently are also banned from my vocab now. I’ve discovered that my infatuation for Wonkette (person, diction, concept, soul, all of it) has led to many unconscious attempts in me to sound like a paid blogger with wit and sass and nothing better to do in life. No, that’s probably no good.

And finally, took a little TV break last night. Watched two back-to-back episodes of “Laguna Beach” with utmost caution, but still managed to feel that my life experiences were fundamentally inadequate as compared to high schoolers – it’s a symptom of MTV. It just operates on a different paradigm of coolness, and I’m roadkill every single time I watch it. And then there was a little “West Wing” catchup. Since when did CJ become chief of staff? TV happens when you’re off living life.

I leave you with three separate (blogged) descriptions of the event to end all events: the premiere to “Closer,” a new flick whose premiere was down the street from us:

“I just got back from the premier of "Closer," which means that I spent the night in the same room as Natalie Portman, Jude Law, and Clive Owen. It was completely amazing and fun. Rachel and I walked down the red carpet together, and I waved pretending to be a movie star and a member of the paparazzi humored me and snapped away. The movie was really good actually, and the whole evening was just so exciting. Only in LA.”

The bonus was not only did we get to walk down the red carpet that the celebs in the movie got to walk down, but I got to sit directly across the aisle from Jude Law, Natalie Portman, and Clive Owens during the entire movie. FYI, they are major talkers during the movie, and I so wanted to SHHHHH them, but I reframed. This was my first, in what's sure to be many, movie premieres.

I SAW JUDE LAW AND NATALIE PORTMAN!! HE WAS WITHIN TWO FEET OF ME!!! :D :D :D … we saw frankie muniz (from malcom in the middle) who is actually REALLY REALLY short. and diane sawyer, who has a really cute face and is incredibly tall and elegant looking. she got impatient waiting for people to open the door for her so she just opened it herself and stepped out. haha.

on indoctrination

There is some validity to indoctrination. There's a slippery slope to every arbitrary value we embrace as a society – if the haphazard act of marriage isn't strictly a man-woman thing, we might just renew that old Biblical habit of making love to sheep. So, we collectively indoctrinate, consciously or otherwise. And indeed, the Puritanism hasn't really gone away – every new concept to hit America is regarded as some level of smut. Liberal smut. Feminist smut. Darwinian smut. Nobody wants to see the erosion of arbitrary values to smut, after all.

This, however, isn't me trying to reinvent a dumb and never-ending discourse on Puritanical societies – we try to keep it ignant here at Devdoot.com. [Yeah, I just did that.] Reason I bring all this up is that I'm okay with indoctrination, it's just how white people deal with diversity.

The place for no-holds-bar indoctrination is clearly the elementary school classroom, but where did it all go wrong? We had a “red ribbon day” every year, commemorating some form of dead people. We had a talking puppet called "harmony the bear" teach us self-esteem. And hell, the pledge of allegiance – not really the most penetrable ode to liberty and freedom.

So my message to educators and indocrinators alike: go easier on the symbolism. Stick with “We love freedom. Gay marriage is bad. Brush your teeth daily. Jesus loves you.” That way, we wouldn’t even have an ACLU to worry about in the first place.

More later. Out to dinner with roommate & fambly.

OCD of Laziness

There are those that will occasionally snack on some cottage cheese with celery, and maybe some dried apricots. And then there are those who settle for the frozen burrito.
[Type A: The woman who feels imprisoned by her thighs. Type B: Everyone else, already liberated by the thunder down under.]

There are those who put the frozen burrito on a plate to microwave it, and then there are those who nuke it in its package or on a napkin, or hell, right on the microwave's base.
[Type A: The structured folk who wanted something to munch on while listening to NPR. Type B: Probably has some aiming issues when it comes to all things urinal, but it's not a problem for him.]

There are those who dispose of the wrapper immediately, and then there are those that leave the wrapper sitting on the kitchen counter.
[Type A: The burrito was actually his roomate's, so not only is the wrapper disposed of, it's also hidden in the trash can under a pile of wasted paper towels. Type B: Conceivably, it could be licked for remaining burrito residue later when he gets hungry again.]

And finally, there are those who don't really notice that the wrapper is sitting on the kitchen counter, and then there are those that are petrified by the implications of depravity that the wrapper represents, but simply can never muster up the energy to deal with it.
[Type A: The alpha male. Type B: Me.]

So, in the end, it doesn't matter if I try to come off as the guy who has no serious issues -- it's an OCD of laziness that would take years of analysis to fix. In reality, I'm always going to be stuck being the guy who cringes at his own (figurative) excrement. I'm always going to worry about the of the burrito wrapper, or at the five empty diet coke cans on my desk and the fact that there's another pepsi can that I shouldn't have drunk in the first place, or at the layer of dust that's currently growing on my car. Way I figure it, I'll save the washing of cars on lunchbreaks for the good people of the world.

Ah, in other news, the answers to the weekend's little game are as follows:
1-B, 2C-, 3-E, 4-F, 5-A, 6-D. Naming names is always too close to a lawsuit, and I'd rather build the wall of people up a little more so as to merit a real class action. If not famous, infamous works too. But just IM me if you'd like identities, and if you can't figure out my screenname, then clearly you don't know just how narcissistic I really am.

More later. For now, I've been told that I've been acting chipper. Damn right, I am. The weather in LA is in the 50's and suddenly, I'm feeding on collective misery.

the algorithm that writes better than I

"Dave Striver loved the university - its ivy-covered clocktowers, its ancient and sturdy brick, and its sun-splashed verdant greens and eager youth. The university, contrary to popular opinion, is far from free of the stark unforgiving trials of the business world: academia has its own tests, and some are as merciless as any in the marketplace. A prime example is the dissertation defense: to earn the Ph.D., to become a doctor, one must pass an oral examination on one's dissertation. This was a test Professor Edward Hart enjoyed giving."

No, it's not my latest try at writing the great american novel, it's written by a goddam computer program. Bar just keeps getting higher and higher, when half the xanga's in the universe are outdone by a few milliseconds of processor time.

i'll be alpha-male in a week

Number of google hits with the words "devdoot majumdar" and:
"insecure" or "insecurity" - 18
"boring" - 33
"aspirant" - 8
"cheerful" - 0

These stats kind of got me thinking -- I've been a little thorough with the "people are insecure and boring" line of thought. It all kind of clicked when I got some positive reinforcement yesterday ("yeah todays blog is awful"). Right, so bottom line, I'm taking a break from the word "insecure."

Inevitably, gossip will get where it needs to go in order to get a rise out of as many people as possible, at least among my circles. So I find out yesterday that a former friend of mine enjoys the phrase, "Dev is interesting, but boy does he have issues." Don't worry people, I stopped myself short of having an epiphany. Whether I have more issues than your average aspirant remains to be seen, but I'm less concerned with actually "having issues" and more concerned with the bad PR associated.

So, this week will be a true attempt at coming off like a guy who has no serious issues. That could solve everything: my unintentional use of Woody Allenisms, my secret dream of achieving real Alpha-maledom, my inability to use urinals next to other people... and the list goes on.

Other news -- diction issues, again. I need some hip new phrases to match my otherwise post-postal-service personality. Apparently "not so much" came straight from Friends. "Autopilot" and "who's the catch" are now written about in detail in a book by the Sex & The City writers. Looks like I'm pulling a Merck. You're only as good as your best one-liner, after all. So, I've taken to think up new catch phrases to present to the readers of this blog for ready basting right into pop culture:
"set the table": preparing for a conversation by thinking of topics and leadins as well as common history that you share with the person. So, you 'set the table' for people when you're unsure of their skills at providing a silence-free, totally ad-libbed conversation. I feel like everyone does this -- you're driving to visit a high school friend, so you dig through your memories to think of some shared moments for use as conversational fodder, yes?

Finally, a note to all girls in high school who read this blog: join that sorority. You'll feel better, you'll feel cooler, you'll feel hotter, and you'll feel exclusive like Pat O'Brien at a Vanity Fair partay. Some Saturday night drama resulted in the following being said (not to me, clearly): "You're shit. You're just shit because you were never in a sorority."

The moral of the story was "don't mess with Aphi," as it was some Aphi disparaging that started the whole thing. But grander scheme, it was a comment that reveals something about the way the Greek world peers out of its toiletbowl. And, no less exciting, the "shit" comment was spoken by the type of girl that would react to 65-degree weather with the full ensemble of Gap scarves and mittens and sweaters and socks with the toe-dividers in perky colors like magenta and neon green with yellow snowflakes. You think saferide sucks -- walking around UCLA is being stuck on a saferide bus for eternity.

Alright, so begins the week where I pretend I don't have issues...

be an ass, and life imitates tv

Retrospecting here -- yeah, I see how that last post is gratuitously self-serving, even for me. If you don't know a single person on the lineup, well, sucks to your assmar. You're probably better off not knowing them, frankly.

Someday you too will realize that 80% of people that life affords you to meet will simply be not worth your time. Maybe it's because there is some truth to not wanting to be a member of any club that'll have you. Maybe (let's say this one with emphasis) it's that people can really truly be boring and have nothing at all to contribute to society or the zeitgeist. Couldn't resist.

I was talking to sidekick Paul (he's sooo the Andy Richter of this blog) about being a social snob, and I outlined what has become a real win/win scenario for me: You weed out the good from the bad with a simple insult. Example? Nickname their face Gettysburg out of respect for their apparent stand against the Proactive Solution. From there, two things could happen:

• The person is not receptive to the joke, walks away like the chubby kid who keeps pulling up his trousers, hates you forever, huffs and puffs, and ultimately creates drama which can be later used as conversational fodder. Drama is never a bad thing, and in the best case scenario, your life becomes like a veritable reality tv show!!!
  
• The person is receptive, engages in a bit of repartee and your life, if only for a few minutes, feels like a sitcom. The serious evaluation really only begins when you have to figure out which slot this new friend of yours fulfills: Will, Grace, Jack, or Karen.
  

So, there you have it. It's all fun and games when it comes to weeding out the boring people.

Alright, I've written plenty. We'll have to hash out the travesty that is "Kinsey" in some other post. But, as promised:

Bad Blogging, Part II in a Series:

The sole purpose of this paragraph is to make this entry look longer.

This paragraph is to inform you that I have laker-bulls tickets a week from sunday. can I get a hell's yeah?

Oh yeah. Earlier in the week (wednesday I think) I got everyone in my genetics class (that includes the prof who is famous) to laugh at a dorky joke that I didn't mean to say out loud. something about a gradient. it was clutch.

Sorry dude, love you man, but the clutch has got to go.

dirty laundry

The smart, socially resilient people in the world don't let people like me get to them. They cherish the notion that they cannot be perturbed by the loud and obnoxious -- they neither like me nor do they stoop to dislike me. But then there are the rare few who somehow allowed their insecurities to be exavated by yours truly, and they generally are the ones who outwardly profess hatred. So, on this chipper Friday, I decided to take a little social inventory, after a short break from blogging.

Below are the pictures of 6 people who, for the record, hate me -- and hate me enough to discuss the virtues of hating me in public:


Below are 6 descriptions of these people in no order. You match 'em up! See, it's a game!

A. Born with a natural stutter, this one participated in one of my blind date experiments for the MIT paper. I never really needed to make fun of him, he just came up with good quotes all by himself. Example: “It seemed like she [his date] wasn’t too happy working hard. I tried to give her some advice about getting out.” Who says that? Anyhow, I never reimbursed him for his blind date, mostly on accident, and ever since, I've been receiving emails from the guy with choice lines like: "If I knew this whole blind date was just your way of manipulating things to fuck over whoever you chose to, I would have told you no."
Insecurities: stuttering (nicknamed "home star runner" because of speech patterns), being the joke of his fraternity, general ugliness.

B. Heavily active in student activities, this one kind of fulfills the "visor-wearing, self-infatuated, inarticulate but thinks otherwise" cliche better than anyone else I've never met. Wrote this about me on someone's guestbook: "Devdoot is possibly the biggest argument in favor of euthanasia that I have ever seen. I guess he is too busy applying rudimentary psychoanalysis (I guess he took 9.00) to matters far beyond his understanding to realize that he is a classic case of the inferiority complex. By deriding others, he feels bigger in his own sad little life. Well that makes him a big man. Truly what we want at MIT and in society at large. What a ****-up. There are only a few people I will say this of (Aimee Smith also comes to mind), but the world would truly be better off without him. "
Insecurities: No clue. Probably very afraid of coming off as dumb. Who uses "****" in place of a big fat expletive? Oh well, don't know the guy. Just amused at his anonymous hatred.

C. One of my best friends at one point, this person later just cut things off without letting me know. Two years later, found out that we were friends because this person was trying to correct me. It seems that this person always thought I was an asshole, and gave up after 2 years because "it was clear that I would never be changed." To this, I say -- liar, I am soooooo worth everyone's time! Anyhow, being smarmy was a conscious effort for this person, and when it failed, in came a veil of reticence. Enjoys maintaining social networks and dabbles in that whole entrepreneurship/business side of things, like all annoying people.
Insecurities: Total napoleon complex. Validates self by being elegantly dismissive.

D. Ooooh, this one's a quiet one. I was so happy I had a white friend, that I completely overlooked the fact that he was fundamentally boring. Worked out with me regularly, see -- whitefolk are such good influences. Never really had much of anything to say to anyone, my nickname for him was "conversational sponge" as the person just sucked the life out of every conversation. Eventually, things got sour when he didn't have a date to our Senior Ball. One day, while walking with him, I ran into a few random female friends and asked each of them to take him to the ball. He flipped out, and will never speak to me again, even after several apology emails. This one is the kind of person who derives all self-worth from a girlfriend, so I was just trying to help the process along. Oh well, sometimes you just can't win with crackers.
Insecurities: EVERYTHING. I mean absoflutely everything.

E. Another best friend gone bad. This one was at one point in his life an exemplary violinist, and that was about the only high point. Very quiet, this one comes off as a total mystery to people, only for them to later figure out that he just has issues with the formation of sentences. Regardless, we got along for some time until I realized he was using up all of my other friends -- social virus. Also, another guy who finds self-worth in women. Only, working the mystery dynamic, he would only go out with girls that approached him, meaning he was always surrounded by crazy fierce amazon women who plunged into his sea of insecurities to try to straighten out the mess.
Insecurities: Everything, again, except for abilities with violin. Took him about 3 years to finish "The Fountainhead," but certainly a bit of an inarticulate intellecutal aspirant. Hides blatant stupidity with vapid pothead statements.

F. Awful, boring, blathering, stuttering, smug, ignorant hick who's here with me in grad school. Physically incapable of pronouncing the letter "w," this guy likes to pretend he has a girlfriend in a never-ending attempt to avoid all of our social events. He passes notes to everyone in graduate school classes, calls everyone "turbo," and infuses awkward silences of his own creation with the phrase, "good times." His idea of "a good shirt" is a hawaiian print with neon colors.
Insecurities: Secretly gay.

Alright, well that was too much fun. It's funny, every time I look at those pictures at the top of this page, I just shudder. Imagine simultaneously looking at everyone who outwardly hates the fact that you are alive -- just a bit emotional. For the record, a certain Ms. Renner's picture was unavailable for this exercise.

filler space

Is it me or has this blog gone from a murmuring yelp to a full blown cry for help?

Last two days fully sucked the life right out of me -- I'll have something interesting to say tonight, I suppose. I'm thinking of a little gimmick to make fun of people in a nice, multimedia way.

And I love my mom -- but all of you who backed her up just gave her waaaaay too much ammunition that will now become a fixture in future disagreements:
Me: I'm right.
Mom: You're wrong.
Me: I'm right.
Mom: 3 people commented in favor of me, that's more than you get for your pedestrian thoughts.

Finally, is it ok to fundamentally dislike someone because they're just clumsy at life?

it's already been brung

Watch out all... Infinite wisdom descends...

when you put up up a blog you should be able to handle the comments - even if it is from me
You sholuld have taken it with a bit of humour. I think you think too much about yourself -
you are a normal person with normal parents with ordinary thinking and ordinary upbringing -
Dont make yourself unnecessarily complicated - I know I have annoyed you - but you should be able to handle it also - just laugh it out. dont take things seriously so much -
I am just a normal mother with normal thinking -

love ma

That was my mother telling me to chill out.
Because I don't let her comment in my blog.
Because she has bad grammar.

violently unoriginal

One of the downsides to thinking you're original is that you're often irrationally crushed when someone else can explain your life better than you can. Case in point? Watching Annie Hall was a bit of a devastating experience for me, as Woody Allen had aptly summarized, scorned, and spat out all meaning to my life and aspirations in what was for me a 90-minute jaw drop. Anyhow, these opportunities don't come often, but I've discovered yet another testament to my existence in the paper this morning: "Oh, Fine, You're Right. I'm Passive-Aggressive." And now, I guess I subscribe to pop psychology too.

Thanks for the good wishes, all. I took them to heart and decided to squander the full fury of my graduate stipend on shoes and a haircut. The haircut? Awful, short, and summarily removed the shrubbery that had been (albeit unsuccessfully) hiding my hairless prarie. Anyhow, I fear my bald jokes are now about as old as my swing voter jokes -- just still in denial (on both counts). In any case, as my hair thins, the hairstylists have gone from recommending mousse (preserves volume) to recommending nothing but wax (unclear -- adds body?).

The shoes? Brown adidas. The eminent mistress of high fashion, Rachana, detests the notion that I would so thoughtlessly subscribe to mass culture. But, you know, folks, it's hard work to spend your life finding Starbucks alternatives, and watching Charlie Rose instead of Entertainment Tonight -- somedays, I'm just in the mood for schlock. I'm learning to settle with the notion that I am a credit card that's tracked, and my collective consumerism is just part of a greater demographic of non-WASP, heathen 18-24 male with some post-graduate education.

And, on a lighter note, I finally figured out the origin of the phrase "chip on one's shoulder."

And, on a useful note, I've discovered this, the wonderful alternative to cellphone 411's.

And, on a useless note, I've discovered this, the inevitable collapse of my future in dating.

yeah ok, this is boring. sorry.

As part of the ongoing quest to understand America, I turned to the American Music Awards, where big man Toby Keith (left) channeled his inner Meatloaf. And the lesson from all this gluttony? Evidently, Real Americans like their Real American Celebrities to remind them of the good old days of family values and truckstop conception. To his credit, Toby was able to massage the pride of Real Americans into a throbbing fury with lyrics like: "You'll be sorry you messed with the U.S. of A. 'cause we'll put a boot in your ass. It's the American way."

And, something else waaaaaaaay on the other end of the spectrum, for the demographic of people known to respond to courtesy with: "Really, darling, you're too generous. We normally let the help do that." Woke up this morning a very special Times "Giving" section, for all of the philanthropists out there, with such headlines as "What One Sandwich Can Feed," "What To Do With All Those Stamps," and my favorite, "It's for a Good Cause, So Shut Up and Deal." Bottom line -- the point of having a "Giving" section in a newspaper eludes me, but the Times occupies HBO status for newspapers, so a special section that milks charities to pay for full page ads even works.

Alright, some ground rules -- we don't discuss the blog in public. As I'm already a real pro at slaughtering first impressions, I'm certain the label "blogger" really won't contribute heavily to my marriage material ranking. As a result, describe me as a jackass, describe me as pudgy and unkempt, describe me as a total aspirant, but avoid the b-word, eh?

I caved & now own an iPod. What really makes me happy about it is that the maximum volume setting is extremely high. This means that I don't feel threatened by my loud-ish volume setting, as it is only halfway up in the volume meter. And if it's only halfway up, then there's no way I'm going deaf, yes?

Oh hot damn, I'm 22 today. I'm just sitting here waiting for the day when my life experiences will cease to be vicarious. Regardless, bedtime diapers are now a year closer.

crimes against humanity

The coffee thing -- done and done. Two cups this morning, with a 10-pack of diet cokes waiting in the trunk of my car. Thank you, to whoever it was who resorted to caps to preserve my fantastic sense of humor -- I needed the validation.

Secondly, if you are legitimately concerned that I dislike you as a person, or worse yet, you somehow have decided you don't like me, avert your eyes in public and openly avoid talking to me -- don't open an anonymous hotmail email account to extol me in private, that only makes me happier. Even better -- say something mean, along the lines of this:

Me: "Hey, Glen, you're looking awful today."
Glen: "Dude, you're a malignant bastard to the breast of humanity, get masectomied."

And it's done! You see, no percolating social drama, no gossip, just one swift jab that makes you feel clever, and there are no beaches of dead seals to clean up.

This brings me to a completely unrelated point: the pity laugh. Someone will tell a joke, and even though this person doesn't determine your salary, you still laugh, because you think it's the nice thing to do. Well, people, it is decidedly not the nice thing to do. Because if this happens frequently and early enough in a young man's development, he starts thinking, "Hey, maybe I'm funny?" And then humanity suffers. Instead, he becomes a lifelong raincloud to humor, forcing all into bouts of undeserved, promiscuous laughter so that his self-esteem might be redeemed. It's just selfish.

The habits of the tragically unfunny come down to several common traits:

1. Let's start with me. I'll tell a story, use all the proper intonations, get people all riled up and eagerly awaiting a climactic punchline, only to miscarry in a hopelessly necrocoital moment with a just-plain-boring finish. And yet, they still laugh, carrying me along, encouraging me to do amateur standup -- you see how this only hurts? Stop faking it, people.
2. Then, there's the type that enjoys mixing random words, messing with the laws of proper diction. "That was so boring, I felt mauled by a paraplegic mongoose," etc., etc. What is this, 5th grade? Stop experimenting with random words, and just settle with the knowledge that you're not inventive, funny, or effectively crass.
3. Then, of course there is shock value humor. "We're talking about threesomes, wanna join in?" or "Are you the child of a rocky divorce?" in inappropriately public places. I've sinned these sins in the past, and repented. Just turns you into the kind of person that nobody ever wants to introduce to their parents. Which implicitly means you are most certainly not on the wedding invite list (we'll discuss another day).
4. Ah, then there's the meta-humor. Everything is passe. Everything is ironic. And the punchline is a vehicle of backward poststructuralists. These jokes are not intended to be funny as much as they are to make fun of the audience. Example? I'll sometimes tell people I'm a Republican just to see their response. Or I'll say my name is Brian. But as a man who has been alienated more times than necessary to learn this lesson, when you make fun of people in a "smarter than thou" meta way, they tend not to like you when and if they pick up on it.
5. Ghetto humor. Yeah, I think this one is fairly self-evident. Save the ebonic twang for your dumb friends who get a kick out of cultural eclecticism.

So, again, the bottom line -- among the many crimes against humanity stands those who consciously laugh at bad jokes. You create social monsters, and that wastes valuable social energy that could be spent on "deep conversations" or the hunting of marriage material, also the topic for another day.

Well, I'm spent. Paul Reiser, Lily Tomlin, bonding with grad students, and understanding my parents will have to wait for another day.

no more double shots

Product*	Caffeine Content (milligrams)
Brewed Coffee (one cup)	135
Diet Coke (can)	47
Red Bull (sugarfree)	80

Right, so I enjoy being calorically challenged. So naturally, I drink quite a bit of the above. But it turns out that taking in over ~350 mg of Caffeine correlates well with headaches. In fact, a full 45% of headaches among Americans can be attributed to coffee. And yes, the bottle of tylenol is no stranger to me.

So that leaves me in a quandary. An older prof was talking to us yesterday and mentioned how he gave up caffeine after discovering heart errythmias. That's no good. Now, Eric -- my favorite hypochondriac in denial -- gave up caffeine entirely months ago. I didn't see why -- he drank like a half cup for social reasons every fortnight. But whatever, I suddenly see a purpose for going decaf.

Bottom line -- if I'm cranky or awful or rude in the coming days, let's be nice and blame it on the coffee withdrawal, eh? (In all seriousness, there's no way I'm sticking to this, but it's one of those stalinistic 5 year plans that might end up getting done.) Maybe I'll finally invest $10 in a Nalgene bottle, start drinking water, eat cereal for fiber, brush my teeth after lunch, and generally turn into that hemmorhoidal vestige of life that lives only to await death.

What is it, an official email holiday? I'm getting NO email whatsoever. I'd welcome some spam at this point, dammit.

CMAs, Rainbows & Pathetic Blogs

Just think about it -- there's a whole 10-15 states out there where today's front page news announces the winners to yesterday's Country Music Awards. So, in light of that, even a raid on a city as small as Torrance like Fallujah is suddenly worth caring about.

And in other news, the Israel-Palestine conflict -- well hey, now that a certain somebody is comatose, everyone might just go flaccid and peace might just happen. The way I see it, if two groups of people as different as lesbians and gay men could band together for a common cause, the Israelis and Palestinians can do it too! You can even take it to the next level of metaphor and think of those Palestinians living in Jerusalem as the trannys at the LBGT meeting, bridging the gap.

And, I've decided to regularly make fun of other blogs, so here's your pathetic snippet of loserdom from another blog:

In lab yesterday, ___ brought in some daffodils that she had gotten somewhere. So of course--something new in lab-->we must experiment with it. We decided that we were going to change the flower's color. But the only dye we could find in lab was in the loading buffer that we use when doing gel electrophoresis. So we just the flower in some loading buffer. Who knows what is actually in the loading buffer besides the dye. we were afraid that it would kill the flower before any of the dye could be taken up to the petals. And to make it a true experiment we just another one in the warm room to see which would take up the dye faster. As predicted, the one in the warm room had blue in the tips of its petals while the one at RT did not. It was a fun experiment.

Zellotry

Everyone's favorite honkey, Zell Miller, gets phlegmatic on Maureen...

Yesterday on the "Imus in the Morning" radio show: "The more Maureen Loud [sic] gets on 'Meet the Press' and writes those col umns, the redder these states get. I mean, they don't want some high brow hussy from New York City explaining to them that they're idiots and telling them that they're stupid."

Pace Picante -- I think you've found your new spokesman. Salsa that's not from New York would sell even better with a little mysogyny on the side.

Feeling trite?

Ten things that say your very existence is a cliche:

1. Once you break the ice with people, you start talking about how much fun it is to have "deep" conversations with them.
   
   
2. You go to Jamaica for a vacation, because you're going to be old in a few years, and even though you missed out on your 20's, you can still milk a few stories out of said trip, even if the stories aren't technically yours. (It's the whole 13 31 tattoo thing.)
   
   
3. You are not a large black woman, and yet follow all of your lame comebacks with: "Oh, SNAP."
   
   
4. You own a shirt with any of the following: CBGB, Che Guevarra (Mumia is still ok.), Ramones, "Everyone Loves an Asian Girl," or the Texas Village Idiot shirt even though you aren't from Texas.
   
   
5. When you're playing a song that you think makes you seem unique, you turn the volume up so that everyone thinks you're unique.
   
   
6. Your stock question is, "What's your favorite movie?" so you can subsequently embark on a boring conversation that demonstrates your superior knowledge of B-list celebrities, directors, and, ah yes, screenwriters from the 80's. If that doesn't impress, your fallback is defend the merits of Citizen Kane, unprovoked.
   
   
7. Even though you actually liked the band, you publicly began to disparage Green Day in 6th grade when they started getting criticized "for only using 4 chords" in their song (It's pop music, people, there are only like 6 to choose from).
   
   
8. You somehow find it appropriate to lather each and every conversation with vapid quotations from any of the following: The Big Lebowski, South Park, The Simpsons, or Dumb & Dumber.
   
   
9. Your two heroes in life are MTV bigshot Guideon Yago and emo superstar Rivers Cuomo. On that note, if there's any emo bullshit in your system, you're cliche.
   
   
10. When you owe people a debt of thanks, you add them to your mental list of people to thank in your Oscar speech. And sometimes, if you're feeling giddy, you even practice it out loud.
    

the vest test

Before the longsleeves, there were the shortsleeves. Before the shortsleeves, there was the polo shirt. Before the polo shirts, there was the flannel. And before flannel jackets, there were t-shirts with words like "radical" or "gecko" or "nevada." Yes, the evolution of my taste in clothing only climaxed after I discovered Phillip Seymour Hoffman in "The Talented Mr. Ripley." After that seminal moment, it wasn't about looking good, it became about looking as eccentric as possible without invading Drew Carey territory.

And so began the experimental period. With the gucci glasses came one more forced eccentricity: the sweater vest. Let's just say it added to the definition that my tummy demands. Anyhow -- that was a passing phase. So, more to the point...

I've warmed to several of my classmates, and though much evidence lies to the contrary, they've warmed to me. I think they've gotten over the tactless hump. So I ran a little social experiment -- wear the hideous sweater vest to see if any of them feel comfortable enough to mock it. It's an ass-ugly, brown, man-nip enhancing piece of work -- it deserves at least a confused look.

But of course, the test failed. Not a single snide remark, but I later verified that they were indeed thinking it. The emotional boundaries of the biologist never cease to amaze me. I was given a word of caution today from swing-voter-grad-student-Glen today about my social standing in light of the families, wardrobes, zits, and mannerisms that have been slandered. I guess I'm used to people rationalizing my grain of salt by taking comfort in the fact that I'm "viciously" insecure.

And among other disappointments today:
This was not the Maureen Dowd I was promised:

They proooomised she looked like this:

Right, not hot either way. But I'd prefer the 'falcon among liberals' look to the libermanesque pigeon look. How profoundly disappointing.

Life by Default

Been thinking that my life amounts to a series of "Yeah, alright" decisions. Part of me, the part the deals with the parents, can carefully rationalize every decision I've made. But, moreso than before, I feel like my life is one of those cars on the Disneyland Autopia -- sure you can turn, and you can pretend like you're controlling the turn, but the decision is being made by steel tracks.

So, here goes:
Should I take Bio AP?
Eh, sure, alright.
Should I go to MIT?
Eh, sure alright.
Should I major in biology?
Sure, why not.
Join a lab, do some research?
Sure, alright.
What's next -- grad school, maybe?
Yeah, sounds good.

Pains me to admit to this, but this is not the stuff of an E! True Hollywood story. My life is en route to suburban mediocrity...

Unrelated note: Paul, I went out the other night and somebody asked me about your story -- seems your commenting habits have led to minor celebrity.

Repeat it enough and it comes true!

George Bush is a kind man who will not be sidetracked by the corrupting political and corporate influences that are sucking the blood out of Washington. A simple man of few words, Bush is both a politician and a rugged American who stands for real American values.

The fact of the matter is that our contry is really hemorrhaging core values -- and though it may be hard to face, we are at a crucial time where serious decisions must be made. President Bush has the courage to make those tough choices -- drawing those fine lines. He will defend America against the hypocritical and hedonistic Europeans, and like Reagan, be able to connect to talk straight to America.

It's time, in these last four years, to forget about his stylistic shortcomings -- sure he can't speak all that clearly, sure he enjoys calling things 'evil,' and maybe he has a little trouble looking gastrically comfortable. But the issue is not whether or not he can pronounce nuclear, it's about whether or not he can persuade the world into seeing things our way. Bush brings a promise that America won't surrender: we won't surrender our foreign policy to other nations, we won't surrender to the cultural decay of Hollywood, and most importantly, we won't surrender to the evil terrorists.

damn you brokaw

and so, a major melancholy has been added to four more years of dev's life.

and maybe in a year or two, SNL will be funny again.

finally of age

first time in his life, dev gets to vote.
and of course, he wasn't on the list.
and instead of pulling a provisional, he is told to leave and bring the voting postcard.
and he was mad.
and wants a class action brought against the stupid lady who wouldn't remind him that he could vote provisional.

damn. what a waste of an afternoon.

debauched out

I had a weekend of biologists & powerpoint. They seem to mix well. And my overarching analysis of the weekend: I'm simply not good at being youthful.

Reading "The Doors of Perception" -- all about Aldous Huxley's mescalin use, and apparently an influential enough book for a band called "The Doors." So, the book is cute in that 1900s pop-psychology way (human nature is evil, patient sample size = 3). But what is uncanny is the resemblance to Huxley's drug experience and descriptions of religious experiences. So, the two possible conclusions are:
1. Religion is a myth of the mind, inducible by drugs.
or 2. The mind opens up with drug use. Either way, highly discouraging.

The bigshot at SNL basically admitted to regular lip synching on SNL. He blamed the big dance numbers these days. And can you blame him? Have you ever heard Ms. Aguilera sing AND dance? Not so attractive, on both counts.

And, after an evening of 'housewives' and 'denny crane,' it was bedtime. I am all sores as a result of playing tennis with a 60-year-old professor. Again, highly discouraging.