I guess it isn't.

I've been going to D&D Dogs in Evanston since I moved to Chicago. Somehow (likely because I usually don't get a receipt, but possibly as a result of their recent renovation) I'd never noticed this before. It appears that the system they use to punch the orders in contains a weensy William Carlos Williams, who doesn't want me to get too self-important over my meal.

Final Four and Championship

#13 Cleveland State Vikings vs. #5 Purdue Boilermakers

Apparently, Purdue was able to make it to the Final Four before it finally ran into someone with opposable thumbs. Caked with the remains of large wild cats, there's little the Boilermaker Special is going to be able to do to stop the Vikings from simply boarding and dismantling the thing with their mustaches. Also, as I understand it, Viking is more of a free-floating scheduled job, whereas trains have scheduled stops and run the risk of pissing off their passengers if they miss them. Vikings don't have to deal with that (even if they do piss off their passengers, it's not like they're going to mouth off to the guy with the axe. Cleveland State makes the Championship Round.

#16 East Tennessee State Buccaneers vs. #16 Radford Highlanders

I don't care how much Johnny Depp you've got, or how many Keith Richards cameos you're planning on throwing at that antler-hat fellow, if your life consists of disease, starvation and occasional theft to survive, you're not going to stand much of a chance. The Field Museum has got a pirate exhibit opening up that I'm excited to go see, but all the ticket sales in the world aren't going hold up against those shoulders. Radford makes it to the Championship.

Championship
#13 Cleveland State Vikings vs. #16 Radford Highlanders

Unlike last year's bracket, both competitors that reached the final round existed. Highlanders still exist, though I imagine they're a bit less like the mascot with his inexplicable helmet and more like politicians and athletes and so forth. That said, and I swear I wasn't running with this the entire time as I'm making it all up as I go, I think I'm going to have to give this one to the Highlanders. Sure, some of them are laypeople (just as some Vikings are Hagar) but in the end I've got to go with "potentially immortal" over "sea-faring".

Your 2009 Murphspot Mascot Bracket Champions


Must not make "there can be only one" joke.

The Radford University Highlanders

So, there we are. A bit later than I'd have liked it to be up, but it's done and I'm going to get back to actually being a scientist. Comments on any or all of it are welcome and encouraged. Links to the right if you've missed any of this nonsense.

Elite Eight

#13 Cleveland State Vikings vs. #15 Robert Morris Colonials

Unfortunately for Robert Morris, I don't believe "Colonials" just applies to the military. Anyone that lives in a colony is a colonial. LARPers for profit in Williamsburg are Colonials. They just seem like the kind of people that would be readily pillaged, and if there's one thing I've learned about vikings in my lifetime, it's that they're good at that. This, then, is the end of the line for Robert Morris, and Cleveland State makes the increasingly improbable Final Four.

#5 Purdue Boilermakers vs. #3 Missouri Tigers

At this point, I'm afraid I'm no longer objective. I just actively want tigers to die. Normally, that kind of conflict of interest would cause me to recuse myself from the Mascot Bracket and have the rest of it filled out by someone who hasn't been driven to the point of madness by the beasts, but in this case, I'm just going to fall back on what I established in the first round and Sweet Sixteen and say that large cat doesn't stand up to "goddamn train". Purdue advances.

#16 East Tennessee State Buccaneers vs. #6 UCLA Bruins

My friend Ben raised a good point. I've got to pick a suitable environment for this matchup. Pirates tend to hang out on stolen ships and ports and Disney World, while bears tend to stick to forests and mountains and Disney World. It seems like waiting for the Pirates to make it far enough inland to be in a forest or for bears to captain a pirate ship (which would be terrifying) are slim, so I'll have to pick their only common ground, Disney World. Which wins? Pirates of the Caribbean or Country Bear Jamboree? Animatronic drunkards and rapists or animatronic yokel minstrel bears? The pirates still have weapons instead of banjos, so East Tennessee State makes the Final Four.

#16 Radford Highlanders vs. #14 stephen F. Austin Lumberjacks

Lumberjacks are great, and all, but when you really get down to it, they're big dudes in flannel with axes. I'm not saying that I'd fight a lumberjack, and I certainly have the utmost respect for lumberjacks, but I think the likelihood that they're going to spend a significant amount of their time in the Pacific Northwest has got to count as a strike against. That highlander still has a huge sword and it's not often that a kilt makes it into the Final Four, so I'm going to have to go with Radford once again.

East/South Regions, Sweet Sixteen

#16 East Tennessee State Buccaneers vs. #13 Portland State Vikings

Again, the Mascot Bracket arrives on an interesting hypothetical. Which style of naval warfare will prevail? I know I've been big on Vikings in this bracket, and even moreso on Portland State given the fact that they seem to employ Boba Fett. However, the Buccaneers have the advantage of advanced weaponry, as well as Johnny Depp. Granted, they've also got to put up with Orlando Bloom.


Still a douche.

I think they'll overcome that, though, and triumph over the Vikings. East Tennessee State makes the Elite Eight.

#6 UCLA Bruins vs. #2 Duke Blue Devils

I've been running along pretty strong with the concept that an elite French military unit is going to be able to hold it's own, but I think I've been missing the true point of the mascot bracket by not looking into the big, plastic-y eyes of the Duke Blue Devil.


Look upon my jowls, ye mighty, and despair.

Seriously, what the hell is that? I've been defending Penn Jillette in a mask? Even if I allow that, what's with the goalie gloves? No. This shall not continue. That guy would get eaten by a bear. UCLA advances.

#16 Radford Highlanders vs. #12 Western Kentucky Hilltoppers

This one's kind of painful, as it pits the lead singer of a band whose entire catalog is about Tolkein and leather harnesses against Big Red, who I imagine reigns over Muppets like some kind of benevolent dictator. Unfortunately for Big Red, the Highlander's sword is a bit too menacing, his boots a bit too "burlap sack tied with rope" for any outcome in which Western Kentucky would move on. Radford wins.

#14 Stephen F. Austin Lumberjacks vs. #15 Morgan State Bears

Close call. Both spend their life in the forest. Bears are vicious and, if Timothy Treadwell has taught us anything, can totally eat you. Lumberjacks are big and tough and know their way around a chainsaw. I think the Lumberjacks probably win because they've likely got a better range, even if they do have to rely on weapons rather than brute strength. Plus, I don't often see bears competing to see who can stay on a rolling log in water (birling!) and therefore Stephen F. Austin moves on.

Midwest/West Regions, Sweet Sixteen

#9 Siena Saints vs. #13 Cleveland State Vikings

Even presuming that the saints are the patron saints of heavy artillery or preemptive warfare or whatever isn't going to save them this time. It really breaks down to one advantage for Cleveland State here. Saints have round, glowing halos and piety and flowing robes and occasionally are surrounded by squirrels. Vikings have metal helmets with big "get the hell out of my way" horns on them and axes and facial hair and body odor. Cleveland State moves on to the Elite Eight.

#6 West Virginia Mountaineers vs. #15 Robert Morris Colonials

Here's something I thought we'd never encounter in the mascot bracket: the Grandfather Paradox. If the Mountaineers kill the Colonials, does that mean that the United States never successfully gains independence from Britain, meaning that West Virginia (hell, Virginia as a whole) remains a British-controlled colony and mountaineering never takes place, having been replaced by dry humor and boiled food? Whether you resolve this through the Novikov self-consistency principle (in which whatever happened must have happened all along) or some sort of parallel timeline setup (in which the Mountaineers may be able to beat the Colonials of a separate timeline but will never return to this one), the only solution I can come up with the Colonials winning.


Grandfather Paradoxes make me think of Heroes, which makes me sad because season 3 nearly killed me with awfulness.

Robert Morris advances.

#8 Brigham Young Cougars vs. #5 Purdue Boilermakers

I'm really starting to think that this is going to be a "how long until Purdue matches up against a person" endurance run. I really see no way a cougar is going to take down a train. The only way I can even begin to address the issue is to propose that Brigham Young doesn't mean cougars in the P. Concolor sense but in the older woman interested in younger men sense, but that's a stretch and risks sacrificing the undying integrity of the Murphspot Mascot Bracket. There's nothing I can do. Purdue advances.

#3 Missouri Tigers vs. #7 California Golden Bears

Seriously, how are there this many "bear/tiger" matchups? I'm going to write a letter to the NCAA, because this is nonsense. How are we, the peripherally-interested-in-college-basketball to come up with a winner when all of the mascots are the same? I think I'm going to go with Missouri, but I'm not sure why. My will has been broken. You've won, NCAA Mascots. You've won. Missouri moves on and I don't know who I am anymore.

South Region, Round Two

#16 Radford Highlanders vs. #8 Louisiana State Tigers

See, this is a matchup. Absurd headbanging Highlander with a giant sword and antler hat against another tiger. Despite my tentative links to Louisiana State (I did some research there in 2005), I'm going to have to go with Radford. Those thighs are too thick, and a tiger seems like exactly the kind of thing that the Radford Highlander would kill, hollow out and wear. Radford moves on.

#12 Western Kentucky Hilltoppers vs. #13 Akron Zips

I'm not sure what on earth Big Red is, and so it's hard to tell whether he'd win in a deathmatch with a kangaroo. Big Red has also got a pouch on his thigh, which I guess makes him a marsupial, which adds a bit of drama to the matchup. The fact that an Italian television station more or less stole the design of Big Red for their mascot, Gabibbo says to me that they know something I don't, and so I'm going with Western Kentucky again.

#6 Arizona State Sun Devils vs. #14 Stephen F. Austin Lumberjacks

I wish Sun Devils were an actual thing. If they were, even if they were some desert insect or some sort of solar event, they'd stand a chance here. As it stands, Arizona State has a cartoonish man in a leotard with a trident, while Stephen F. Austin have Lumberjacks who have axes and beards and flannel. Stephen F. Austin goes on.

#7 Clemson Tigers vs. #15 Morgan State Bears

This is the third "bear/tiger" matchup we've come across in our mascot bracket journey. I have stopped caring about which would win, but just because there aren't as many bears generally in the tournament, I'm going to go with the rationale I used in the Cal/Memphis matchup and just give this to Morgan State.

East Region, Round Two

#16 East Tennessee State Buccaneers vs. #8 Oklahoma State Cowboys

I'm surprised "Pirates vs. Cowboys" isn't as prevalent a hypothetical battle as "Pirates v. Ninjas". I suppose it might have something to do with the stereotypical "sitting around the fire, eating beans and spinning yarns" view that cowboys tend to evoke. Perhaps it's just a way of preserving Pirate/Ninja conversations so that Tony Romo can't weasel his way into the conversation. Either way, I think Buccaneers win this matchup, if only because their job involves attacking people and taking their possessions by force, while cowboys move cattle. East Tennessee State advances.

#5 Florida State Seminoles vs. #13 Portland State Vikings

Two proud peoples, and it's hard to say who would win in a fight. I'd like to give this to the Seminoles (if only because "Unconquered People" is a pretty badass nickname), but I think they might get points taken off for living in Florida. Vikings, on the other hand, live where people shouldn't, and as a result wound up in Canada. Also, the logo is actually a nice deviation from the standard Viking logo.


Apparently Vikings were Mandalorians. Who knew?

Portland State wins.

#6 UCLA Bruins vs. #3 Villanova Wildcats

I'm still not sure why so many schools use Wildcats as their mascot. They're tiny, they're very closely related to domestic cats (F. Silvestris versus F. Silvestris Catus) and I'm pretty sure they could be punted a good thirty feet. Not that I would. But "adorable" doesn't get you far against a big ol' brown bear. UCLA advances

#7 Texas Longhorns vs. #2 Duke Blue Devils

I'd be terrified if a bull were running at me, but I'm not sure that a longhorn poses quite the same threat. Something about how the horns go off to the side makes me think I'd be able to avoid it while it tried to figure out how to gore me. Without making any jokes about French military prowess post-Napoleon, I'm sure they'd be able to hold their own. I'm not exactly sure about the temperment of longhorns anyway. I'd like to think they're a bit more aggressive, but every cow I've ever encountered just sort of stands around. Duke moves on.

West Region, Round Two

#1 Connecticut Huskies vs. #8 Brigham Young Cougars

I've got a lot of respect for Huskies. They run across Alaska (I'm not even sure I could do that) and they seem to be pleasant enough while also being big enough that I wouldn't one one in my apartment complex. Unfortunately, running across barren wilderness isn't an event in the Murphspot Mascot Bracket Challenge. I'm a man of science and if there's one immutable law of the universe, it's that if you put a cougar and a husky in a cage, the husky's not walking out.

Brigham Young moves on.

#5 Purdue Boilermakers vs. #13 Mississippi State Bulldogs

Purdue always wrecks this. There's not much that's going to stand up to a train, and since life isn't a heart-warming children's movie in which animals can talk and may or may not wear conductor hats, there's not a whole lot a bulldog is going to be able to do to a train. I could ease up and go with the idea that the boilermaker is the guy that makes the boiler, or that it's referring to whiskey and a beer, but a bulldog's not going to be able to do much to those things either. Purdue advances.

#11 Utah State Aggies vs. #3 Missouri Tigers

I'm sensing that we're going to come to a tiger bottleneck at some point and I'm going to have to decide between which one of the thirty tigers is going to be superior. Unfortunately, I can't deal with that here. I don't care how much agricultural science you know, a tiger isn't something you want to be in a deathmatch with. Missouri goes on.

#7 California Golden Bears vs. #2 Memphis Tigers

Didn't I just have a Bear/Tiger matchup last round? Cal's bear is a lot less tumor-y and seems to have a snarl, which to me suggests ferocity, while the Memphis tiger appears to be miming driving.


Your mascot is less likely to win a fight if its "lunging" posture is the same as its "Mario Kart" posture.

While I'm not sure bears and tigers tend to hang out a lot, and therefore have no way to confirm which would win in this matchup, I'm going to say that Cal advances.

Midwest Region, Round Two

#16 Morehead State Eagles vs. #9 Siena Saints

I think this one really depends on which saint we're talking about. If it's St. Francis of Assisi, which would probably not be a bad guess as it's a Franciscan university, the eagle's probably going to win as the saint's not going to attack. If it's the patron saint of hunters (Hubertus, evidently), then the eagle's not going to stand much of a chance. I'm going to presume it's either Hubertus or Gummarus (lumberjacks) or Isidore of Seville (computer scientists) and give the win to Siena

#5 Utah Utes vs. #13 Cleveland State Vikings

Now that I've got all the Macchio out of my system in the first round, this seems like an easier decision. Utah's got purposefully weakened beer, wacky government (insofar as "backwards and borderline oppressive" can be considered wacky) and movies with Matthew Lillard and Jason Segel. Vikings have axes and Thor. Cleveland State wins.

#6 West Virginia Mountaineers vs. #3 Kansas Jayhawks

I don't know much about the mountaineering lifestyle, but I'm positive it involves shooting things, mythical or otherwise. In addition, the Kansas Jayhawk appears to be wearing giant yellow clown shoes.


I have no idea how he buckled them

That seals it. West Virginia advances.

#10 USC Trojans vs. #15 Robert Morris Colonials

USC, unfortunately and through no fault of their own, make me think of those annoying "Trojan Man" commercials, which are just this side of "five dollar footlong" in terms of sticking in my head. The Colonials stir up bad memories of a "Colonial Inn Diner" where a friend of mine tried to order eggs florentine before being told that the fact that there was a picture of it on the menu was not meant to imply that they served it. Overall, I'm going with Robert Morris, as we've got the matchup of two military factions and I feel like I should go with the one that won their war.

South Region, Round One

#1 North Carolina Tar Heels vs. #16 Radford Highlanders

Two teams whose names derive from generic terms for people. I'd love to see a game in which actual Tar Heels (let's say Zach Galifianakis, Reginald VelJohnson, Charlie Rose, Ben Folds and Andy Griffith) against natives of the Scottish Highlands (William Barclay, Yvette Cooper, John Shepherd-Barron, inventor of the ATM, the Loch Ness Monster and Connor MacLeod). But, as this is a mascot bracket, the focus should be on the mascots. Rameses has got this cocky swagger and, I think, too many curves in his horns. The mascot for Radford is this guy.


If your mascot is clearly listening to anthemic metal, it means you win.

Look at that guy. Even if we ignore the absurdly large muscles, he's still got an enormous sword, a helmet that strangely has one centered antler and some pretty impressive Conan-the-Barbarian hair. I'll even ignore that the artist got us as close to seeing his package as is allowed for sports logos. Radford with the upset.

#8 Louisiana state Tigers vs. #9 Butler Bulldogs

This bulldog is more clearly a British Bulldog with a hell of an underbite. As it stands, that's not that threatening. Which is a shame, as they could have fixed the entire ordeal with a rhinestone Union Jack, some ridiculous braids and enough bronzer to drown an anteater.


Davey Boy Smith is not going to stand for your Cajun nonsense

As it stands, though, we've got a diminutive dog going up against Mike VI, who weighs 300 lbs and lives off of a diet of palmetto bugs and fear. Which there's plenty of, because of the palmetto bugs. I haven't been there in four years and I still have nightmares about three-inch flying cockroaches. Christ. Ok. Let's move on. LSU wins.

#5 Illinois Fighting Illini vs. #12 Western Kentucky Hilltoppers

With the retirement of Chief Illiniwek in 2007, I'm afraid the chances for Illinois go way down. It's just very difficult to win a mascot-fight-to-the-death when you have no mascot, and your only logo is a big orange I.


"Oksee-Wow-WaaauughOhGodmyflesh"

While the Hilltoppers would certainly lose if this were a "fearsome team name" bracket, they enter with a bizarre, abstract mascot named Big Red who just seems to be having so much fun I'm tempted to move to Western Kentucky.


Having the caption be anything other than "Whee-hah!" would be blasphemy. So, "Whee-hah!"

Western Kentucky wins.

#4 Gonzaga Bulldogs vs. #13 Akron Zips

Zips, or zippers, are rubber overshoes. Ignoring the mascot for a second, the way to strike fear in my heart is not to be galoshes. I've never been scared of galoshes. Galoshes full of spiders, perhaps, but the galoshes are incidental to that. Their actual mascot is Zippy the Kangaroo (who I'm disappointed to report doesn't have his own saturday morning cartoon) and he's going up against a bulldog. My first thought was that the bulldog would have the advantage, but I imagine a kangaroo could kick a bulldog in the head pretty hard. Akron moves on despite the uninspiring name.

#6 Arizona State Sun Devils vs. Temple Owls

Owls can be scary. I've been in the forest at night with a screech owl, and I'm pretty sure neither of us were happy with the expierence. He wasn't down with my presence in his habitat, and I wasn't down with his hell-screams and was convinced that he was using them to tear my soul from my body. That said, Sparky the Sun Devil has a cartoonish mustache, a leotard and a trident rather than a pitchfork. Still, it's stabby. Arizona State moves on.

#3 Syracuse Orange vs. #14 Stephen F. Austin Lumberjacks

I have to admit, I follow college sports with such little tenacity that it hadn't even struck me that Syracuse ceased being the "Orangemen" in 2004. Orangemen might have had a chance here, but shortening the team name to "Orange" means there's no chance I can allow them to move on. You could argue that the name refers to the color, and as such, the section of the electromagnetic spectrum we perceive as orange isn't vulnerable to an axe to the face, but given the mascot, Otto the Orange, the Lumberjacks aren't only going to defeat them, they're going to consume them as part of a balanced breakfast. Stephen F. Austin moves on.

#7 Clemson Tigers vs. #10 Michigan Wolverines

Lots of tigers this year. I like that, because tigers are generally going to provide for some better fights than last year's ever-present wildcats. Unfortunately for Michigan, they're offering up what amounts to a large weasel that probably doesn't even have an adamantium laced skeleton. They do have Mathman's support, but I believe Mr. Glitch went to Clemson for a few years before backpacking around Europe, so I'm going to have to go with Clemson here.


It's surprising he could do elementary math at all with such a disproportionately tiny foot. Mathman is an inspiration

#2 Oklahoma Sooners vs. #15 Morgan State Bears

I have known a few Oklahomans in my time. Sooners, the original settlers of the Unassigned Lands that became Oklahoma, I imagine were resourceful, hard working and determined. If you threw one of them in a cage with a bear, though, I don't think the Sooner is walking out. Sure, they've probably got guns, but I've been doing a bit too much of the specist stuff in this round, and I'm going to go with Wikipedia's insistence that Sooners were often land surveyors and try to imagine the Sooner being armed only with a dumpy level and their wits. Yeah. Morgan State moves to round two.

Next up: Round Two.

East Region, Round One

#1 Pittsburgh Panthers vs. #16 East Tennessee State Buccaneers

The homer part of me wants Pitt to win this, but I just don't see how they can. Panthers are vicious, sure. We've been over my feelings on big cats (or small cats with exceptionally sharp claws), but a Buccaneer's likely got a musket, a sword and is probably pretty pissed off about having scurvy.


Though, this particular buccaneer may not pose too much of a threat, as he's cyanotic.

Even with the various medical conditions the Buccaneers are no doubt infected with, I'm going to have to go with them. East Tennessee State moves on to the second round

#8 Oklahoma State Cowboys vs. #9 Tennessee Volunteers

I appreciate the spirit of volunteerism. I don't do it enough. But this is about a fight to the death, and Habitat for Humanity doesn't have an answer for dangerous loners who spend all their time with cattle. Moreover, when I hear "cowboy", I think of westerns generally, and I'm pretty sure Clint Eastwood could kill whoever the hell he wanted. In fact, I'm not sure why the whole "Chuck Norris joke" phenomenon had to happen to Chuck Norris instead of Mr. Eastwood. Clint has the bonus of being both relevant and not batshit insane.

#5 Florida State Seminoles vs. #12 Wisconsin Badgers

Again with the "human versus animal" matchup. Badgers have this reputation for being vicious and are good at holding on if they've decided to bite you, but they're going up against the Unconquered People, who I'm positive would be able to take down a rodent. Florida State in a rout.

#4 Xavier Musketeers vs. #13 Portland State Vikings

Xavier was the champion of last year's Murphspot Mascot Bracket, but they run into some tough competition early. I'm not sure how giant wooden boats are going to hold up against musket fire, but in general, I think the facial hair of the Vikings is going to help them. Somehow. I'm not sure. Against the vicious attack of the Vikings, the Musketeers are going to have to ask for some strategic assistance from someone who knows their strength and weaknesses.


Oh boy

Portland State with the upset.

#6 UCLA Bruins vs. #11 Virginia Commonwealth Rams

These matchups always seem simple. Bears kill things pretty easily, and I was trying to think of how a ram could conceivably kill a bear. The best I've come up with is either causing some kind of internal hemmoraging with blunt force from the horns, or luring the bear up onto a mountain, getting it to unwittingly stand on the edge and pushing it off. That seems a bit too "cartoon villain" to be plausible, so I'll go with the simple answer and say the ram's getting mauled. UCLA takes it.

#3 Villanova Wildcats vs. #14 American University Eagles

Two of the most overused mascots in the NCAA. I'd like to imagine that this will end in complete destruction of both, just to thin the herd of wildcats and eagles. Realistically, though, even though the wildcat's a lot smaller than I expected, I'm going to have to go with Villanova. Cartoon cats kill cartoon birds, and that's good enough for me.

#7 Texas Longhorns vs. #10 Minnesota Golden Gophers

Here, we've got a tiny burrowing rodent. Apparently the "true gopher" is the "pocket gopher" which doesn't inspire much terror. If "my word, that thing's small enough for me to carry around as though it were spare change" is part of the name of the animal, that's a strike against. To be fair, "Goldy Gopher" appears to be a chipmunk, which is a bit less embarassing, but I don't like having to play with what the hell the mascot is. Longhorns, on the other hand, have big spears on the side of their heads. Texas it is.

#2 Duke Blue Devils vs. #15 Binghamton Bearcats

The Blue Devils (Les Diables Bleus) were an elite French mountain infantry unit. The bearcat (Binturong) isn't a bear, a cat, and appears to spend most of its time hanging out in trees.

They also like to eat benches, I guess.

The bearcats get points for the coincidence that typing "bearcat" only uses the left hand, but whimsical observations aren't enough to save it from the Blue Devils, even if they are French. Duke wins.

West Region, Round One

#1 Connecticut Huskies vs. #16 Chattanooga Mocs

Everyone else that's even taken any kind of cursory glance at the bracket has already done the "What the hell's a Moc?" joke, and after looking up the athletic program at University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, I've got to say they'd have had a better chance in this if they'd stuck with their original mascot. A water moccasin could actually present a challenge to a dog like a husky, as it's probably getting bitten at some point. The intermediate mascots (a moccasin, as in a shoe, and "Chief Moccanooga") could have offered some interesting matchups (Chief Moccanooga doesn't seem to be a reference to anything really, but could probably have killed a dog), but what we're left with is a mockingbird. A mockingbird driving a train, sure, but as the train only appears in the logo, it's not fair to include that in the mascot death match. Huskies advance.

#8 Brigham Young Cougars vs. #9 Texas A&M Aggies

Puma concolor is intimidating. They've got teeth and claws and I can hardly deal with housecats coming after me without nearly dying. Bonus, apparently the Apache and Walapai of Arizona regard the wail of the cougar as a harbinger of death (presumably by cougar on your carotid). Aggies have perhaps the most accurate team name (as "Aggie" simply means "student at an agricultural college", which all of the players are), but I can't imagine that any amount of schoolwork is going to help you when you hear the Wail of the Cougar (coincidentally my favorite Twisted Sister album). Also, an image search for Aggies turned up this camel-dog-with-makeup-that-evidnetly-sings unholy driver cover. As far as I know, this is offered from an independent agency and the camel-dog-from-the-underwold isn't technically the mascot of Texas A&M, but it's too frightening not to include.


Enjoy the nightmares

Brigham Young wins.

#5 Purdue Boilermakers vs. #12 Northern Iowa Panthers

It's going to be tough to beat a train. I suppose that you could make an argument that an actual "boilermaker" is the guy that makes them, but he's probably pretty handy with a wrench and I wouldn't want to fight one. Given that the actual mascot is the Boilermaker Special, a train, I'm going with that. As much as I made the case during the last matchup for the ferocity of a giant cat, it's not doing anything but getting run over here. Purdue moves on.

#4 Washington Huskies vs. #13 Mississippi State Bulldogs

This matchup makes me feel uncomfortably like Michael Vick. I can't tell from a picture of the mascot whether the bulldog in question is of the British or American variety, but considering that it's Mississippi, I'll presume it's American. Huskies can run across Alaska and have the nifty heterochromia thing on their side, but I'm pretty sure a bulldog could bite my arm off if it really felt like it. Given the two, I am going to go with the bulldog based on nothing in particular. Mississippi State with the upset.

#6 Marquette Golden Eagles vs. #11 Utah State Aggies

I appreciate the specificity. It's finally not just an eagle, it's a specific eagle. It also makes me think of Coach, but those were the Screaming Eagles, so I'm not sure why that is. Maybe it's just a fond nostalgia for Bill Fagerbakke.


"Lovable Dimwitted Assistant Coach" Bill Fagerbakke, not "Neo-Nazi Prison Guard" Bill Fagerbakke

I'm actually going to go with the Aggies here, as I imagine that they'd be able to figure out how to kill an eagle (either directly or by manipulating the ecosystem), even if they have chosen willingly to live in Utah. Utah State wins.

#3 Missouri Tigers vs. #14 Cornell Big Red

Since Big Red's an abstract team name, I'm going with their mascot, Big Red Bear, making this matchup awesome. Tiger vs. Bear is the sort of death match that should be on an album cover or, failing that, Fox. I'm going with the Tigers for two reasons. First, while bears are terrifying and spend their time killing you in Werner Herzog movies, they spend a lot of their time hibernating (important in March). Secondly, the mascot appears to have some sort of back issues.


"Oh crap. I have to turn in this logo, but I've got no idea how to draw a bear's hindquarters. They're got giant tumors, right?"

Missouri moves on.

#7 California Golden Bears vs. #10 Maryland Terrapins

I grew up with the concept that turtles, if given enough toxic waste and a giant rat as a teacher, can learn martial arts and protect reporters in yellow jumpsuits. As I've gotten older, I've learned that dumping toxic waste on turtles causes protests, that giant rats are riddled with disease, and that reporters in jumpsuits don't deserve protection.


Maybe she minored in Auto Repair. I still don't get it.

Given that this is a bear going up against a standard turtle with no superpowers or junk food, Cal takes this in a walk.

#2 Memphis Tigers vs. #15 Cal State Northridge Matadors

Another Tiger versus this year's bullfighters (as San Diego's Toreros aren't in the tournament), and though I went with the human last time, I'm going to say that the tiger wins this. Sure, the Matador has got the sword and the banderillas and the big fancy cape, but all the impressive cape-twirls in the world aren't going to stop Montecore here from tearing a leg off. Memphis advances.

East Region, Round One when I get a chance.

Midwest Region, Round One

Play-In Game

Alabama State Hornets vs. Morehead State Eagles

If there's one thing last year's mascot bracket taught me, it's that a disproportionate number of schools are attempting to instill fear in their athletic opponents by using either an Eagle or a Wildcat. I'm a little disappointed that we're starting out with the birds already, but that's certainly no reason to take this matchup any less seriously. I really dislike hornets. They sting, they're intimidating, and they tended to nest on the bleachers at my high school, which made summers slightly less fun. That said, we've got an unpleasant wasp going up against a bird whose entire raison d'être is killing things and eating them. Sorry, Alabama State. Morehead State takes the play-in.



Bruce Lee is displeased, having just been informed that an Eagle is going to peck his eyes out through that mask.

#1 Louisville Cardinals vs. #16 Morehead State Eagles

We've got one game decided (that typically doesn't even count for an office bracket) and I'm already on edge about the number of birds in this tournament. That said, I've seen cardinals. They're brightly colored, sing and eat seeds and have that nifty little plume thing on the top of their heads, and if it weren't for them, I wouldn't have just learned, via wikipedia, what a "passerine" is. That said, I'm not sure something which hangs out in woodlands and is known for being both easy to spot and not eating things that aren't seed-ish is going to be able to take on something that's got so much experience nabbing fish out of the water in flight, not to mention holding an olive branch and enough arrows to make Oliver Queen take notice while apparently hovering. Morehead State advances again in the biggest upset in NCAA history.

#8 Ohio State Buckeyes vs. #9 Siena Saints

This one's tough. "Saints", presumably, refers to people who have been canonized, as Siena College is a Franciscan institution. The mascot, though, instead of being "Saint Andrei the Iconographer" or "Saint Maximus the Confessor" is a St. Bernard. The dog. With the barrels and the saving people and the awkward Charles Grodin/Bonnie Hunt nonsense.


He's embarassed for you, Mr. Grodin

I'm tempted to go with the Buckeyes here (as buckeyes are poisonous), but I'm going to presume that the dog/Iconographer is going to instinctively avoid eating them, and rather just urinate on something. Also, if it hadn't been for Siena just now, I wouldn't know that Wikipedia has a list of Flying Saints, which I imagine has got to be useful for a basketball tournament. Plus, one of them's Saint Christina the Astonishing, and any connection to Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds' "Henry's Dream" album is going to get bonus points. Siena advances.

#5 Utah Utes vs. #12 Arizona Wildcats

The obvious thing to do here is to make a "What is a Ute?" joke and run with My Cousin Vinny humor. I'd like to avoid that, but there's two things that are stopping me. First, Ralph Macchio looks exactly the same as he did in 1992.


Forty-seven, my ass

It's only logical to assume he's still got the knowledge he'd picked up as the Karate Kid and would be able to take down a wildcat, which were established last year as not being particularly intimidating. Secondly, the "ute" line was delivered by Fred Gwynne, and Fred Gwynne is too awesome not to advance. Utes advance.

#4 Wake Forest Demon Deacons vs. #13 Cleveland State Vikings

Demon Deacons is a pretty awesome name. One thinks of the climax of The Exorcist, or if you're a little bit less of a purist about what constitutes a demon, the scene in 28 Days Later where Cillian Murphy enters the church after waking up from his coma, both of which are going to be pretty intimidating no matter who you are. On the other hand, Vikings have swords, long boats with shields and oars and their own haplogroup. I think I might have to go with the beardy fellows with the axes over the unstable clergy. Cleveland State with the upset.

#6 West Virginia Mountaineers vs. #11 Dayton Flyers

Having grown up in western Pennsylvania, I've got a pretty good understanding of West Virginia and their Mountaineers. Sure, the Alleghenies aren't as high or as steep as the Rockies, but I feel like if I wanted to learn Mountaineering under some sort of master Mountaineer, they'd do just fine.


I am positive this man knows things I do not. I am more than happy to keep it that way.

The Flyers, on the other hand, have flight, but that seems to be about it. They evoke little red wagons in my mind, which a Mountaineer would surely stomp on before using it to beat some elk to death and then wear them. Or something. They certainly don't provoke the same "dangerously insane/lives where no one could hear you scream" vibe that I get from the Mountaineers. West virginia moves on.

#3 Kansas Jayhawks vs. #14 North Dakota State Bison

"Jayhawk" is apparently a Civil war term adopted by Kansas abolitionists, combining a blue jay (which is noisy) and a sparrow hawk (which is apparently not, but I'm in no position to confirm). So, that's certainly a bonus. Bison, on the other hand, I've seen footage of and seem to be pretty huge, even if we do tend to kill them off in large numbers. If I go with "Jayhawk" as refering to the abolitionist group, they've probably got guns and could take down a bison. If I go with the "mythical but tiny bird", it's going to get stomped to death by 2000 pounds of bison. As much as I'd like to go with North Dakota here, I'm going to presume they mean the abolitionist (for the time being) and go with Kansas. What I don't envy is the sad truth that after the Jayhawk shoots the bison down, they're only going to be able to take 100 pounds of meat back to their wagon. And that's not enough to stop anyone from getting cholera or breaking a wagon axle.

#7 Boston college Eagles vs. #10 USC Trojans

Again with the Eagles. In this matchup, though, they're going up against people who have clearly fought in a war and undoubtedly have arrows (at least enough so that one could, of all places, wind up in Achilles' heel). I'd really, really like to go with Boston College here, because I don't want to be tempted to use that Orlando Bloom picture again down the line, but there's just no way. No matter how much preying that eagle is a bird of, it's not going to stand a chance against USC without at least bringing Odysseus into the mix, and I hear he's hard to get in touch with.

#2 Michigan State Spartans vs. #15 Robert Morris Colonials

I'd love to give this one to Robert Morris, if for no other reason than that I've got some twisted homer-ish desire to see Moon Township do something well. At first glance, I'd have to go with the Spartans, who've got that whole "prowess in battle" thing going on and have abs that could destroy Tokyo, according to Zach Snyder. Then again, the combination of the whole "culturally accepted pederasty" thing and the fact that Colonials likely have much longer range weapons (not that I'm sure what musket fire is going to do to a shield) makes it a close one. In the end, I'm going to have to give in to the advanced technology of the Colonials, along with the fact that I don't care how militant and brilliant you are, I'm not scared of NAMBLA chapters.

Next up: West Region, First Round

Return of the Murphspot Mascot Bracket

It's March again. Over a year since I did the "post once a day" project, and I've fallen into a pattern of never, ever posting. But, as I'm always looking for opportunities to do so and had fun doing it last year, it's time once again for the Murphspot Completely Improbable Mascot Bracket that has No Relation to Sports at all. Rationale is the same as last year's. Whichever mascot would win in a fight to the death (in some improbable scenario in which they mascots can't just ignore each other) moves on in the bracket. I'll default to the mascot in the event that the team name is abstract, and I'll just assign losses randomly. Any disagreements are welcome in the comments, but it's all nonsense anyway.

The schedule, here, is going to be first and second round by Tuesday, Sweet Sixteen and Elite Eight by Wednesday, and the Final Four and CHampionship by Thursday. That way, if you completely disregard rationality and actually run with this idea, you'll be able to get your Murphspot Completely Improbable Mascot Bracket that has No Relation to Sports at All bracket entered in whatever office pool you're probably in.

First up: Round One, Midwest Region

Attempting Comic Books

I've never been someone who reads comics, really. I don't have anything against them, I just never really went through "let's buy superhero comics" phase when I was younger. I think it's partially a function of growing up where I did, where the only way I'd have been able to get anywhere was to bike, and the hills of Western Pennsylvania made that more difficult than I was willing to bother with in my adolescence. Actually, I'm not sure I'd bike as much as I do now if I lived somewhere that wasn't as completely flat as Chicago, but that's a subject for another post. As I got older, I read the standard books (Maus, Watchmen, V for Vendetta) and was kind of on the periphery, enjoying comic-book movies, but still never really got into them.

Anyway, I'm back again to experimenting with the idea of reading comics. Mostly, I think, it stems from this weird tendency I have to become moderately curious about a mythology, then read everything I can about the mythology, then sort of move on. I did that with Piers Anthony's Incarnations of Immortality books and The Dark Tower series (which I should probably re-read at some point), as well as with Lost and Doctor Who. With the last two, particularly, there was a definite progression from mild interest ("I wonder what all the fuss is about? Perhaps I'll netflix it" and "Oh, hey. I liked Simon Pegg in a few movies. Perhaps I'll watch this episode of Doctor Who he's in.") to reading everything I could about the mythologies of the series ("I should probably watch Pierre Chang's warning to the future." "What is the significance of the Valeyard, and will he reappear after the Doctor's twelfth regeneration?") It's been a while since I've really done that with a mythology, so I think it's probably time to do it again.

Enter Green Lantern.



Again, this probably is rooted in the fact that I never really read comics as a kid, but I've never known much about Green Lantern. Batman and Superman are both such huge cultural icons that you can't really help but know what the deal is there. For the rest of the (original lineup of the) Justice League, Green Lantern seemed the most intriguing. Wonder Woman's fine and all, but the magical bracelets and invisible plane seem strange. The Flash is there, but he's just a fast guy. It's very straight-forward, but that's not really something I can get into. Aquaman exudes uselessness, to the point where I forgot he existed when watching a Justice League movie, until he showed up in the final three minutes to say hello. There's probably a wealth of interesting psychology behind Martian Manhunter, but then he seems to be a green Superman, and Superman never really appealed to me because he's got too much power.

So there we are, left with Green Lantern. I've purchased a collection of "landmark" Green Lantern comics chosen by the guy that wrote two recent storylines ("Rebirth" and "Sinestro Corps War") and is responsible for this summer's crossover storyline ("Blackest Night"), and so far I've been enjoying it, even if the stuff from the sixties is a bit campy. Generally, there have been some interesting views on power, jealousy and order (specifically in the I, Lantern and What Price Honor? short stories.) I'm interested to actually read about the rise, fall and redemption of Hal Jordan outside of Wikipedia summaries, so I've got Emerald Twilight and Green Lantern: Rebirth on the way from Amazon.

So we'll see. Maybe I'll actually succumb to the call of geekdom and start reading Green Lantern comics. At the very least, I'll read a few storylines before getting bored and watching Star Wars again.

There's Got To Be Some Other Name For It

it's apparently 0.5 degrees fahrenheit (-17.5ºC! 255.65 K! 460.17 Ra! -1.68°Rø!) in Chicago. which, I found out earlier tonight, is too cold to stand around waiting for the train, especially if you're like me and forget that the little salad-bar-heat-lamps on the platform don't actually do anything to provide any warmth. Relying on my apartment's steam heat isn't much better, but it's tolerable. Knowing that I'd have to venture out into the cold and because I was fed up with trying to download a copy of EndNote from the Northwestern IT site, I somehow found my way back to the Wookiepedia.

I should start with this. I'm amused by the incredibly specific wikis out there. HeroesWiki was useful as I remained fascinated by the show's nosedive toward awfulness (plus, it was the only place I've found the most hilarious screen-cap of any television show in the history of television and confirmed that I wasn't losing my mind and that Peter did indeed taunt Sylar with, no joke, "I'm the most special!") I've written about Lostpedia before, which is a pretty good resource even if the "theories" pages do tend to get a little wacky. There appear to be wikis for everything else in existence, but one of the first of these I found was the "Wookieepedia", an incredibly large, overly extensive Star Wars wiki. Perhaps spurred on by a recent Alt Text concerning incredibly minute details in Star Wars canon, and the fact that it's incredibly cold, I wound up on the entry on Hoth.

I understand that fandom tends to concern itself with getting every single detail about every single detail, but I was somewhat surprised to see that there's evidently some source out there which gives an Average Planetary Temperature for a planet that, in terms of the movies, is important for right around twenty minutes. I'm not sure how you just assert that it's -61ºC (I guess you want it to be really, really cold, but not so cold that the carbon dioxide is going to start depositing out of the air), but it's nice to know that the authors of the authors of a book for a roleplaying game decided on a number, and that that number as good as fact for the Wookieepedia. Deciding on the climatology of minor fictional worlds in movies isn't what I spend my time doing, but I'm not really in a position to knock it too much.

What confuses me is this. I'm not sure whose fault this is (the authors of the eight sources listed on the page of something which isn't in the movies or the editors of the wiki), but when you've set up a resource where you can find long detailed pages about anyone who anyone has ever written about ever as well as Jedi who appear to have been named while the author was bored and in the kitchen or watching their cat walk across the keyboard, it's a bit disappointing that it's just called a "knobby white spider". That's what I'd call it, but I don't even count as someone who liked the movies in comparison with the editors of the wiki.

It's just sad, is all.

I Think About Elevators

Desperately trying to cheer myself up from the travails of grad school, I was doing what I normally do at about this time and repeatedly pulling up random xkcd comics. Which I realize is something that's probably overdone, but it goes well with my threadless t-shirts and my bad-tasting-but-attractively-priced-alcohol and my awful music and everything else which has rendered me a soulless brand-hungry homunculus.

That not withstanding, I eventually ran across this which reminded me of something I occasionally thought of and something I was talking about yesterday.

Imagine you're completely unfamiliar with the concept of an elevator. You've never seen one before, you've never ridden in one before. They are completely foreign to you. Now let's say you're following your friend around a building and he gets in. Let's also postulate that this is the smoothest elevator ever, so it's hard to tell when you're moving (adding that bit back in is a bit farther in the thought experiment). He presses a button, and you move down into the basement.

From your perspective, you entered a room, pressed a button and when the doors opened again, the entire world was different. You were in a different place. Sure, you'd probably figure out (especially if you could feel the motion) that you'd been in a box that was suspended in a shaft and that you simply moved down the shaft, but I'd be really tempted to think that it was a magical world-changing box.

Milk

I've never seen a lot of movies in the theater. There's been a bit of an uptick in that recently, but I'm still kind of limited by the fact that I'm a graduate student, which means I don't have the money to see too many movies or the free time I'd need to see them. I finally got around to seeing Milk, though, and figured I'd jump on it while it's still fresh in my mind to actually start writing on here again. And no, before someone on the internets asks, I didn't see it in a Cinemark theater. I saw it at the Landmark on Diversey and Clark; the same place I saw Redbelt (which, if you haven't seen it, is a pretty solid movie).

The assassination of Mayor Moscone and Supervisor Milk happened a good five years before I was born, so I hadn't really heard much about it. I'd heard vaguely of the "Twinkie Defense", but I never really looked into the person that term was coined for (Former Sup. Dan White) or the case behind it. It seems really strange, now, that I'd not heard of Harvey Milk before this, but it's possible that I'm just completely unaware of the things that go on around me. I could spend this post talking about Sean Penn's performance as Milk, or James "I'm in this as penance for being in Spider-Man 3" Franco as Scott Smith, but that's boring. That's been done everywhere else, and I'm not particularly good at it.

Instead, all I could think of while I was watching it was how incredibly appropriate it was for what's happened in the past few months. I'm to young to remember Anita Bryant running around the country, trying to eliminate laws that barred employers for firing employees because of their sexual orientation, but when Marina turned to me after her introduction and said "She's Sarah Palin", the parallel was hard to dismiss. The fight against California Proposition 6 in the film (which would have called for the firing of anyone employed by California schools who either was homosexual or wasn't outwardly hostile to them) mirrored the recent passage of Proposition 8, which amended the state constitution to ban same-sex marriages. I'm not sure whether the speeches were taken verbatim from the speeches Milk gave, but the focus on hope seemed oddly similar to Obama's message.

Beyond the politics, it's just a good story. The tension between Scott and Harvey, the difficulty of running a campaign (and the changes that were necessitated between the first and second runs) and trying to figure Jack out would make it something you should see even if you don't particularly care about what its opponents would demonize as the "homosexual agenda". But the politics are essential. It's oddly inspiring that way. Milk is set up in the first few minutes as a forty-year-old closeted insurance salesman who's never done anything with his life other than just getting by, and is able to take a position and effect actual reform with it. Lately, I've been having a lot of doubts about what I've done so far, but hell, if someone can get elected City Supervisor and push through a successful campaign to defeat an unjust bill between the ages of forty and forty-eight, then twenty-five is starting to seem pretty young again.

I don't know if I've ever experienced this before, but people were audibly crying by the end. That may say something more about the kind of movies I tend to see than anything else (people weren't crying at Ghost Town or Die Hard 4, and there were only two other people in the theater the last time I made it to the Music Box to see Boy A, which you should do if you haven't, by the way), but nonetheless, I thought it was an appropriate reaction. Afterwards, the mood seemed a bit somber; it seemed like we'd just watched the rise of this politician and radical reform he was able to enact in the mid-seventies, but since then nothing's changed. I don't think I agree with that. The anti-protection-from-discrimination laws have been tossed out and while we have states changing their governing document to make sure only certain relationships are given the full benefits of state acknowledgement, same-sex marriage is legal in two states, something that is so far beyond what Milk and his allies were fighting for that it's hard to believe it's only been thirty years since the events of the movie. The most perplexing part of the whole mess was (in the film) and is (in reading arguments against gay rights) that I just don't understand why people care so much. The bogeyman of "they'll come after the children" is invoked, but that's not got much statistical evidence to back it up and, on the whole, is an appeal to base fear. I don't, and likely won't, understand how people can simultaneously claim to be in support of limited government and advocate an expansion of governmental power into the personal lives of citizens in such a way. It all seems to be a screen for something else. It has to be, because I don't understand what the deal is otherwise. It's hinted at in a recreation of a debate between Milk and John Briggs, a legislator in support of Prop. 6, that it's all really about a power grab and the institution of a society much different than the one the Constitution mandates (which, I guess, makes it appropriate that people are demanding we change the core document to get their petty prejudices codified).

The only thing I'd have liked to see more of is the story of Dan White, who seems like a decent guy throughout, if a bit overwhelmed by what he's been thrust into. The movie, I think, actually makes the case that his murder of Harvey Milk was not motivated by Milk's sexual orientation, but that he was merely someone who irritated him and was on his mind when he snapped. His plans to kill two others, though not shown in the movie, suggest that it was premeditated and that he had just completely lost it, and I'd have liked to see more of his descent from supervisor-who's-trying-to-do-what's-best-for-his-constituents to someone who would assassinate the mayor and a co-worker. It seemed kind of sudden. But that's a minor detail. It's not a movie about him. It's a movie about Milk, and you really probably had better see it.

The Results of My Godawful Attempt at Making a Functional Website

I actually finished this late last week, but I've been working out the kinks and neglecting to blog about it (which could apply either to this project or things in general lately.) The O'Halloran Group Page is back online and completely redesigned. For those of you who don't know, that's my lab (as is evidenced by me being in that picture on the entry page and on the group members page). It's arguably not much (I based it off of a template, but had to learn how to play with the CSS well enough to make it work reasonably well), but it's the most thorough job I've done of building a website since sophomore year of college (when I made a special interest house site for the Jazz House), and it's far and away the best and I hope a bit better than the old site. Most of the content's the same, but the site hadn't undergone an overhaul since 1998 (meaning most of the links were out of date, none of the individual pages were consistent with one another and no one who joined the lab in the past five years was actually acknowledged on the site, and a few of the old grad students had to have their "current status" updated from "doing a post-doc at University X" to "Tenured Professor at University Y") and used frames like they were going out of style (which they did.) I've worked out most of the bugs I've found, so let me know what you think. And by let me know what you think, I mean give me positive comments.

Serial Killer Fiction

I've been taking in quite a bit of serial-killer related fiction lately. I'm not sure why. Well, no, I do know why. Because I've enjoyed American Psycho for a few years and finally decided to go back and read Bret Easton Ellis' novel and because, while the Instant Viewing service from Netflix isn't terrific with its variety, it has managed to turn me on to a few shows I wouldn't have watched otherwise, Dexter being the most relevant for this post.

For some reason, I'd been avoiding it, but after watching it, the idea of a serial killer who follows a strict code caught me as "really damned interesting". For a while, the wikipedia page for the Dexter Morgan character included what his alignment would have been if he were a Dungeons and Dragons character, which I found kind of interesting because even though I've never played D&D, I like the idea that two words can plot you in a little matrix that describes your motivations and how you treat others. But then there was some disagreement over whether he was Lawful Neutral or Lawful Evil, and eventually someone realized that we probably don't need to apply fantasy gaming systems to every character in all fiction, and it's since been removed. Either way, I became a big fan of the show, have since watched both seasons that have been released so far and eagerly await the start of the third season (which is surprising, as I don't have cable, but damn it, I'll figure out some way to watch it.)

For the same reasons as I picked up Ellis' American Psycho, mostly wanting to see how the series compared to the source material, I went out and bought the first two of the novels that inspired Dexter. I should note a few things first, though. I don't like doing literary reviews, mostly because I don't think I'm a very good writer, I don't think I read enough and, after all, who the hell am I? Second is that I realize that they're trying to draw in people exactly like me, who have seen the story in one medium and want to find out what the original is like, but I'm really not a big fan of plastering stills from the show on the cover of the book. Just no. But getting back to it, I went out and bought Darkly Dreaming Dexter and Dearly Devoted Dexter.

I'd recommend against that. For one, I could never quite escape the reality that I was reading a crime novel. Not that that's a bad thing, but there are times when the over-the-top mystery-crime-ness of it became off-putting. Lots of cliches, and a few too many points where I noticed that the writer was trying to be witty. Which is fine, but I prefer a little more subtlety in my serial-killer-as-antihero crime novels. The cops all talk like crime-novel cops and the second book seems to have lost a bit of the charm present in the first. But that's fine. Some people are down with that, and I'm not even necessarily knocking it as writing technique.

The bit that actually bothered me was something that I had to reflect on a bit. It seems to me that the books go in a far less interesting direction than the series, but I have no way of knowing whether that's just an artifact of the fact that I saw the series before I read the books. Certain characters living or dying or not being exactly as I remember them from their portrayal on the Showtime series is absolutely fine. The books are, after all, the source material, and though I think some of the characters are a bit more deeply explored on the show than in the books, that's fine. Some decisions, though, it just seems a bit hard for me to understand.

Massive spoilers ahead. Only continue reading if you've seen the series, read the books, or don't care.

Although if you don't care, you should be doing something else.

The first series and first book end with the revelation that Dexter's brother is alive and is also a serial killer who happens to have been dating Dexter's adoptive sister, and a final confrontation occurs between Dexter and the brother. In the series, the sister is unconscious for this confrontation, and it ends with Dexter chasing off his brother and later killing him, as he believes he will never stop attacking his sister, who he claims he's fond of at the same time he claims that he can feel no emotion. In the novel, the sister is awake, Dexter very nearly kills her himself, and then helps his brother escape, despite the fact that he's just killed a police officer.

The first scenario is more interesting, to me. The internal conflict the character suffers from knowing that he has a living relative who shares his same mental illness, but knowing that preserving his current lifestyle means forever cutting that contact off (literally, in this case) drives the ending. Having Dexter nearly kill Deborah removes another dramatic aspect of the television ending, that though it's true that Dexter and his brother are both serial-killers, Dexter is somehow elevated above that by his adherence to a strict code, while the brother kills without reason, merely to satisfy a blood-lust. Dexter's adherence to this code and refusal to kill innocents is what allows the reader/viewer to identify with him. It's not entirely that he's charming, it's that his claims of being a hollow monster come off as not quite true. One feels, in the series and the book up until that point, that he's lying to himself, claiming more emotional deadness than he's actually saddled with. Furthermore, Deborah's consciousness plays a very important role. In the series, she is unconscious, never learns her adopted brother is a serial-killer and hence doesn't have to change the way she acts towards him. It sets up a huge arc for the second season; the question of what would happen to the friends and family who depend upon Dexter if his murders were ever linked to him. In the novel, she realizes he's a serial killer, but doubles up on the "gruff cop" act and inexplicably refuses to turn her brother in, despite knowing that he's responsible for 40+ murders. Their chemistry is essentially destroyed, and it's implied that it's only because he's her brother (by adoption) that he's not been turned in, which is made further unlikely when she freaks out and threatens to turn a visiting federal agent in for buying methamphetamine in an effort to confirm the presence of a meth lab. She claims that she "took an oath to stop this kind of shit" and threatens to arrest him. Yet we're to believe she just sort of grudgingly accepts that Dexter's a mass murderer, no matter what his reasons for killing are? It's unreasonable and, for me, destroys a bit of the illusion. It just seems like a case in which the less interesting choice was made.

But, then, what do I know, and I'm probably being influenced by the fact that the first thing one sees is what one tends to feel a connection to.

Only one final complaint. Things that sound strange stick out to me. I don't like reading typos in a book I've paid money for (and there aren't any, so far, in either of these) but confused metaphors also kind of stick out to me. Shortly before writing this post, I read a passage in which an ER doctor answers a question about whether a patients blood contained any drugs with "Traces, hell. This guy's blood is a cocktail sauce."

Leaving aside the bit where, I guess, he could be referring to the fact that cocktail sauce is made of a variety of ingredients, it seems like a bit of a stretch to connect the phrase "drug cocktail", referring to a solution of a variety of drugs similar to the way a cocktail contains a variety of liquors, with the patient's blood. It just. No. It makes me think of shrimp, not so much with how many drugs are in the guy's system. Nitpicky, sure. But I'm writing a whiny, irrelevant review, and I'll put whatever I want in here.

Making Things Not Suck

So, my forays into actually making a website that looks decent have been suspect at best. I remember, I suppose during my senior year of high school (as I clearly remember doing this on a desktop in the house I grew up in) setting up a variety of incredibly amateurish websites done in the most basic HTML possible. I did it again in trying to make a Jazz House website when I lived there during my time at Allegheny (I'm not sure it exists anymore, as the people who lived there after I left were too lazy to fill out the paperwork and lost the house), but again, that's probably gone. I think the only reason that I have been keeping up with Murphspot (to the extent that I've been doing that) over the past few years is that it really doesn't demand that much in the way of design, and while I'd like to do more to control how this looks, the templates are good enough and my readership is small enough that I don't really care.

So, because I've never really done anything beyond the incredibly elementary, the whole "volunteering to update the lab website" has turned out to be an interesting experience. The current site was, it looks like, written in 1997 and everything has been piled on since then, resulting in a huge mess that made no sense. So, I've decided to make a new website, still depending on a template (because I'm not good enough at CSS to come up with a design that doesn't blow, but I'm getting better at understanding what does what) and getting everything else to work in a way that doesn't break the universe. Once I'm done with it and relatively ok with how everything looks, I'll post a link here.

And then everything will be fantastic.

Children's Cinema

I saw Wall-E last night, and I could write something about the allegations of "fattism" because of its depiction of a dystopia in which humans have become too reliant on entertainment, machines and convenience foods or the rampant Leftist Propaganda allegations that go along with a children's movie which would dare suggest that maybe you should exercise and not throw garbage everywhere (though, notably, it doesn't touch the concept of global warming; humans didn't leave earth because the climate changed, but rather because there was simply too much trash to move, which is I think to its credit). Yes, there's probably some anti-consumerist propaganda latent in the whole Buy 'n' Large corporation which runs the world (though that New York Times opinion piece does well to point out that Wall-E depicts a future where big business has merged with Big Government, which, at least traditionally (though I'd suggest that the current administration has been characterized by huge increases in government power), conservatives are supposed to be against. I've always held that the first purpose of going to see a movie is to be entertained, not to nitpick any part of the plot where you disagree with the writers and get all whiny about it, and I can't think of another way the plot they wanted to tell could have been set up. So yes.

No, I'm not going to write about any of that. Instead, I was stunned into silence by what happens when you go to a children's movie. The audience was fine, though I was worried about that in the beginning. They laughed at the appropriate times, there weren't kids screaming about "yay robots" and it was generally a pretty well behaved group. What got me were the previews. Now, given the types of movies I typically go to see, the last few previews I've seen were for comic book movies (during Iron Man, including one preview for a showing of the live-action Death Note movie), independent films (during Redbelt, which if you haven't seen, you should) and generally something exploding (during Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull). I'd mostly forgotten that children's movies exist, because I'm sort of totally divorced from any media outlet where they're going to be advertising. But, having bought a ticket for Wall-E, I was suddenly right back in the center of "marketing-to-kids".

First, I don't think there was a single movie that was previewed which had human protagonists. Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa, The Tale of Despereaux, Bolt and a movie which I won't mention just yet were all previewed, and it appeared that only in Bolt were there significant roles for human characters. Have I missed something? Were my childhood movies completely devoid of people? I mean, sure, talking animals, but no people? Where is the lovable misfit baseball team? Where are the adventuring pre-adolescents lurking around in phenominally dangerous scenarios? Where are the giant death robots?

I'm old.

The film I didn't mention above (because it deserved special note) was Beverly Hills Chihuahua, which, frankly, made me hate children merely with the insinuation that they would be entertained by it. The trailer is here, though I've got to warn you that you probably shouldn't watch that if you like having the will to live. There's just no part of that that doesn't offend me on some level by merely existing. I don't even get the reason it exists? I guess there was the whole "small dogs which go in purses and are used as accessories" thing, but the last time I recall a Chihuahua in popular culture was eight years ago for those awful Taco Bell commercials. I don't know who pitched this, or who thought it would be a good idea to make this, but the idea that kids are going to grow up in a world that contains Beverly Hills Chihuahua horrifies and infuriates me. There are a few reaction videos of people watching that trailer on YouTube, a lot of which seem staged and as though the person in the video is playing up being shocked at how bad an idea this is, but there are a few that seem to be genuine, characterized by speechlessness.

So yes. Beverly Hills Chihuahua has succeeded in making me lose hope for the future. Thanks, Disney.

Addendum: Why on earth was there a Billy Ray Cyrus music video during the previews?
Second Addendum: Wall-E was actually rather good. I'm not sure you would have gotten that from my post, but there was indeed enough time between the Beverly Hills Chihuahua trailer and the movie that I could stop seizing and enjoy the film I'd paid to see.

The Columbus Voyage

I've traveled by bus before. Not for very long distances, but when there's something like Megabus which offers (as long as you purchase it far enough in advance and are going somewhere that no one actually wants to go) $1 tickets, it's hard to justify flying over the bus.

Until you've been on it for nine hours.

Before last weekend, I'd only ever used Megabus to get to Milwaukee, which is a 90 minute drive that I'd make if I had a car and is nowhere near far enough to justify actually flying there, even if this was back in the dark ages when fuel was actually affordable. It was an hour and a half on a bus, but I think I got some reading done (I think that was when I was reading The Fountainhead) and it was tolerable enough. I have it on good authority that even the four hour bus-ride from Chicago to Toledo is relatively painless, as “by the time it gets unbearable, you're there.” After nine hours on a bus between Chicago and Columbus, I think I've found that point at which it becomes not worth it at all.

To start with, some of you who have made this trip (and know it should be six hours) might be wondering why it took us nine. Evidently, you're supposed to go through Indianapolis if you want to get to Columbus, but throwing in Cincinnati, which is about an hour out of the way, throws the whole thing off.

If that was all it was, that the bus went a bit further south out of its way than it had to if it were strictly a Chicago-Columbus route, I'd have no problem. It told me that on the ticket, after all, and if I'm bad enough at geography to have not known how far out of the way Indianapolis and Cincinnati are, well, that's my fault, not the fault of the Megabus. Nor can I blame them for not being able to fall asleep. I can hardly fall asleep anyway, and being on a bus didn't help that any, particularly when the ride down was filled by listening to podcast after podcast. I would like to question their judgement in picking sites for dropoffs.

Both Chicago and Columbus are fine in this regard. Buses in Chicago stop at Union Station, which is useful because it's somewhat of a hub as far as both Metra and Amtrak trains, and is pretty close to the loop, where you can pick up any inner-city train you'd want. In Columbus, there's a stop at Ohio State (which is useful, because that's just as likely as not to be the reason you're going to Columbus) and at some sort of bus depot, which is at least still in the city. Getting off in Cincinnati at 5am in what appears to be the middle of the damn city (stopping on a street corner) is a bit of a stretch, but at least it seemed to be a pretty nice part of the city, and so that's fine. Indianapolis looks a bit better during the daylight, but stopping there at 3am is a different story. The lights come on, everyone wakes up and about a third of the passengers de-bus, while the rest of us sit and look. It appeared to be kind of an open plaza, which I'm fine with. Open plazas are fun. The seven 24-hour bail bondsman locations on the street perpendicular to ours were... something other than that. They were the only thing open, and though now it seems like not that bad a part of the city, when the only things that are open are “hey please get me out of jail” shops, well, I'm not sure what you're supposed to think.

Either way, it got me down to my friend's bachelor party without much trouble, and got me back to Chicago the next day (an hour late, due to the bus driver's frequent stops, leaving us all on the bus while he went to the restroom, and the ride up until Indianapolis was next to a woman who just flat out refused to do anything about her baby who was screaming its lungs off, but what are you going to do? Be a parent?) and while I wouldn't recommend it for nine hour trips, it was less expensive than a plane. So there's that.

I'm glad, even with gas prices, that I'm driving to Cleveland for the wedding this weekend. At least there'll be no screaming babies.

The Wonders of my Adventure Spoon

I was planning, initially, on writing another post where I whine about how maybe it'd be nice if I could run into Dominick's at 12:45am looking to buy some and soap and not have the five people in the only line open be doing their shopping for that month all at once. I pretty much fulfill all the stereotypes of the “lonesome bachelor”, but sweet mother of God, there's no reason to buy thirty Lean Cuisines all at once. The store's going to be there tomorrow.

So yes, I was planning on kvetching about that for a few paragraphs, especially as I rode home at one in the morning over roads which can charitably be called “paved”. But then, something happened.

I allowed myself an indulgence, you see. I don't have the best diet, but I've been trying to fix that, and decided to give myself yet another allowance. If I buy a sugary cereal (rather than something bran-y), well, I'm at least still getting milk, and that's good for you. So I bought a box of Frosted Flakes because it was on sale. I had settled on opening it as soon as I got home for a late night/pre-sleep snack (which considering how difficult I find it to get to sleep, was probably not the best plan) and wonder of wonders, there was a prize. I'd forgotten about prizes. I think most of the prizes I'd run across in the past few years had been some kind of lame temporary tattoo stuck somewhere in the middle of the box, or an advisement that you save up UPC codes in order to get some barely-worth-the-effort , piece of merchandising. When you get something solid, plastic and potentially useful in box, though, it's (apparently) a joyous experience.

Upon opening the box, I found a small plastic spoon in two parts. So that's actually the first thing. Not having to dig through a box of cereal and open a sugar-coated plastic bag is a bonus. And if you're completely unaware of the promotion, you don't find out on your fifth straight bowl of cereal at 3am on a Monday. You get to enjoy it straight away.

Apparently, it's an Indiana Jones Adventure Spoon, by which I mean a two-part plastic spoon emblazoned with a skull and other logos from the recent Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. It's not going to affect whether I see the movie (I saw it the week it came out, and was somewhat disappointed, but thought it was a fun ride nonetheless. I could go in to exactly what I found objectionable about it, but I'll save that for another post), and so for me, it's just an extra spoon, which is good, because I don't have that many. And there's a small yellow light at the end of the (grip/barrel/whatever you call the part of the spoon you hold on to), such that when you press a button, the bowl of the spoon is yellow and glowing, like it's The Spoon of the Ages. Furthermore, simply pulling the bowl off results in a somewhat effective if low powered-and-yellow flashlight, which was effective enough to help me find my keys.


Before adventuring, please check your firearms, your satchel of survival gear and your nifty-plastic-spoon-that-lights-up.
And so, from what seemed to be a bad night at the supermarket, I now have a brand new utensil perfect for eating bowl after bowl of sugary cereal in a darkened apartment at five in the morning, staring into the middle distance and weeping quietly.

3.9/5 for the light-spoon.

The Laundry Adventure

I'm currently writing from inside the “Morland Cleaners”, the first laundromat I've ever had to use. Actually, no, that's a lie. We used one when several friends of mine and I went to Ocean City, Maryland after our senior year, but I don't really know why. I guess because it was between our apartment and the tattoo parlor (which was technically in Delaware). Anyway, that has been my only experience with laundromats until today, if you don't count that one episode of Dragnet where Sgt. Friday kills someone and they have to find the bullet in the laundromat or he'll be fired. The washer is broken in my building, and rather than schlep wet clothes back there to dry, I figured I'd do it all here.

I'm trying to spend the same amount I usually do on laundry ($2.50), but we'll see if these clothes need another twelve minutes of drying soon enough. Actually, by the time I post this, I'll know, and will be able to update you. I'll leave that until the end, though. Building suspense and all that.

Morland, by the way, is likely taken from the fact that it's near Ashland on Morse, which takes me back to my first apartment, on Sheridan and Glenlake, which was called “Sheridan-Glen” and which was a nice, quaint little 4+1, with crackheads in the lobby, a washer immediately above my apartment which, it turns out, the management company had not had a plumber check out, and so drained into my kitchen sink and a never-ending roach problem. It was fun. Anyway, this place seems to be much better, despite the “parts of street names” name, though I think that might be because I can leave soon. There are knick-knacks all over (I guess that's the name for them), including, from what I can see from my position facing the manager's office, some Indian corn and chili peppers stapled together, a sort of weird hook-golden-with-jingle-bells Christmas tree, a bunch of puppies, two of whichever the red Teletubby is, and a variety of lollipops, not least of which are both Dum-dums and Ring-pops, which I remember being kind of unpleasant and never fitting without pinching. Oh, there's also a pretty phenomenal clock which is in the shape of the top half of a gold wristwatch on the far wall. I'd appreciate a bit more air-conditioning (I've become spoiled since buying a window unit last week) and a bit fewer mosquitoes (but if you've got to have the doors open because there's no air, I guess I understand), but overall, not an unpleasant experience. There is a telenovela blaring on the television, but that's better than silence, I guess, and if I start coming here more often, I may even start trying to pick up some Spanish again. There's also a lot of signs, most of which are along the lines of “Please don't break everything”, but one that reads “You are responsible for your child's behavior and well-being” I find kind of poignant. It probably says something about me that rather than bringing a book, I brought a laptop because I knew I wouldn't be too distracted by the internet to actually write a few posts, but let's just leave that where it is.

So yes. 3.1/5 stars for the Morland Cleaners, on the “Scale I Just Made Up” scale of Murphspot. I'm not sure where other things rank, so for reference, name things in the comments, whereupon I will offer snap judgements.

Oh, and the dryer seemed to work solid enough on 3 quarters (36 minutes). If it gets me writing again, I may start coming here more often.

Day of the Dead, 2008. A Review

I haven't been writing in here at all lately. Part of the problem is that it seems like something you have to sit down and do, and nothing seems like it'd be interesting enough for me to bother commenting on. That isn't to say that my commentary is in any way unique or insightful, but by the time I hear of something and convince myself to write about it, it's been written about by everyone, everywhere.

That isn't to say that there hasn't been anything to write about. I could have written a review of the new Indiana Jones movie (better than Temple of Doom, not as good as Raiders or Last Crusade) or yammered on about the fact that if you get into a car-on-bike accident with a laptop (which wasn't my fault, other than biking in Chicago at night, as opposed to me doing something like riding my bike down the wrong side of the road) and then trying to get home in the rain a few months later will eventually kill it, followed by a review of my new sort-of-cheap laptop which is better than what I had. I could have commented on the whole “Lesbians At SafeCo” thing, but that would have been a rather predictable “People shouldn't be so frightened to talk to their children to explain what's going on, but the Mariners are a private organization and can tell anyone to leave for any reason, but they probably wouldn't have done it if it were a straight couple, but I'm bored of this and desire nachos.” I could have continued blogging about the whole “let's try not to be such a fatass now, shall we?” but given my penchant for nachos, that seems sort of hypocritical.

Thankfully, there are things that exist explicitly to get me to break out of these blogging slumps. And those things are really bad horror movies.

I don't think I've seen enough bad horror movies actually. The worst, I think, has got to be House of the Dead, which might be in my top three for worst movie I've ever seen, but that's Uwe Boll and hardly controversial. The worst premise has got to go to The Mangler, adapted from a Stephen King short story in which a laundry folding machine is possessed by a demon and starts killing everything. My standby, even for bad horror, is the zombie genre. There are a lot of terrible zombie movies (the copies of Undead and the more ancient and MST3K friendly Revolt of the Zombies remind me whenever I go by my DVD rack.) But there have also been a lot of fantastic ones. In what can be an abused genre, there is the basis of a terrific story. George Romero's Living Dead movies (at least the original three, and arguably Land are rich studies in social commentary. Ben's level-headedness and fate in Night and the Hari Krishna/Nun zombies as well as the dissatisfaction inside Monroeville Mall in Dawn are what make those movies terrific to this day. Day as well has some interesting insights into the authoritarian mindset and asks, essentially, “Who is a person?” with the Bub subplot.

So when I heard there was going to be a remake of Day of the Dead, I got excited. After all, the remake of Dawn in 2004 was a pretty good horror movie. They discarded more of the social commentary of the original than I would have liked, but overall, it's a fun zombie movie, done really well and very much in the style of 2002's 28 Days Later. Surely, I thought, this Day remake will be along the same lines, and I'll enjoy it and not spend the entire movie wishing for the sweet embrace of death.

Not so much, it turns out.

Netflix, which is my primary source for entertainment given that I don't subscribe to cable, had Day of the Dead on their “Instant Viewing” service, meaning that I could watch it streaming online without having to wait for it in the mail, wasting an actual mailing. I have never been more glad about that. I watched it last night while I was stuffing pipette tip boxes (a tedious task that's relatively mindless, and therefore something during which it's ok to watch a movie) and ... my God.

It's bad enough that it's the first movie that's compelled me to write a Netflix review. Let's start there.

Actually, let's start with this. There are going to be spoilers following this disclaimer. If you haven't seen Day of the Dead (and why should you?) and want to keep things a surprise, by all means, stop reading now. And then don't ever watch Day of the Dead.

It turns out that Day 2008 was initially supposed to be a theatrical release, but after poor reviews during screening, became a straight-to-video project. It discards everything about the original except very superficial concepts, like “the military is involved” and “Bub”, whose role is diminished and is confusing. It starts off as many zombie movies do. The military is quarantining an area in Colorado (which we eventually learn is because there's a virus that kills you, causes you to grow bad makeup and leap across the room, searching for a victim that's been released). There's initially no explanation as to why. People start getting sick. The family members of the protagonists start getting nosebleeds, and we all know what that means.

They'll turn into zombies within five minutes or so (though the timing seems to be kind of arbitrary, with some having enough time to be admitted and given a hospital bed and others, prominently “Bud” being left in a humvee for all of a minute). All hell breaks loose because, apparently, dying and reanimating now gives you goddamn super powers. It looks a bit cartoonish as zombies leap after their victims, but it's basically all lost when they start climbing bare walls and running along the ceiling like they're Spider-Man. I guess this is the next step after “fast zombies”.

Characters we don't care about (Mena Suvari and her brother, who have some sort of dispute in the past that's never actually explored, Ving Rhames, who was in the Dawn remake but is playing a completely different and unrelated character here, Nick Cannon, whose primary function is to run around playing bad-ass and making the lamest puns imaginable, and a motley crew of other survivors that are completely uninteresting) have to try to make it out of the town to, well, someplace that doesn't have zombies. What follows is about an hour of jumping out of windows, Nick Cannon getting a machete, Ving Rhames turning, getting up to eat his own eyeball for some reason (which raises the question of why zombies wouldn't eat other zombies, since apparently they're just really hungry) and Mena Suvari's boyfriend-that-she-met-literally-a-few-hours-before being bitten and reanimating and, for some reason that's not actually explained, being allowed to hang out in the back of the Humvee. There's a handwaving explanation as to why he's docile (“They must retain some bit of what they were, and Bud was a vegetarian”) and they never adequately explain why he's the only one in the town who doesn't immediately tear the flesh off the nearest person. They make it to a barn, then go down the road to the enormous military/medical bunker that's apparently in the side of the mountain in the middle of the woods to find a doctor who deserted them earlier and is working for the government, who released this on everyone. He explains that “certain people are immune to the virus, but if you're bitten that immunity goes away” (which I'm almost certain is now how viruses and immunities work) and shows a video which introduces Patient Zero, the doctor who was working on the virus. The protagonists try to kill him, but he dodges bullets. Because, you see, they retain something of what they were, and all biochemists are Neo from The Matrix.

Trust me. I work with a few and they're always going on about the struggle against the machines and the Architect and it's like whatever, man. Play around with your plasmids and let me eat my bagel in peace.

Anyway, yes. Neo Zombie and a horde of others chase our heroes (minus Nick Cannon, who thankfully finally gets killed by something) to a broom closet full of gas tanks, and what follows is an affront to both physics and special effects. One of the characters knocks the valves off of the canisters to release all the gas (which I'm almost certain would send them rocketing through the wall, not just sitting there slowly releasing their gas, given the pressure those tanks are under), while another lights a spark and the Magical Oxygen follows the zombies around, melting them the way nothing melts while leaving our heroes unscathed to go back outside, where everything's magically ok now. Somehow.

Which brings me to my final complaint. Ok. It's a terrible movie. Whatever. It's even got nothing to do with what it was claiming to be a remake of. Fine. But, and this is the same complaint I had with House of the Dead where there is no House, all of the events take place over about ten hours at night in Colorado.

So, Day of the Dead is not even set during a Day of the Dead.

There are a few “what the hell, why not” moments, mostly comprised of zombies flying over things or, the only decent scene in the film as far as I'm concerned, emerging from a bunker with automatic weapons firing wildly into the air (because you're damn right that's what I'd do if I were a zombie), and at least one memorable line (“What a dick!”, which is actually the most convincing part of the whole endeavor), but overall, it was miles and miles of awful.

So yes. Maybe I'll start writing here again.

The Grocery Store

I've written on here that before I made the decision to become a chemist, I spent my time working a variety of godawful jobs. Actually, if you were reading this early enough, you saw a documentation of what I hope is the last of those jobs, "the guy who makes burgers at McDonald's who I hesitate to call a cook of any kind". Before that, I spent about two years of summers, weekends and weekdays after-school doing various things that could be categorized as "retail" The first six months was spent as a stock-boy for a local franchise grocery store, which was terrible and made me hate the idea of employment, but which is somewhat relevant here. The last 18 of those months were spent at a K-Mart, which was so much better it's hard for me to explain while still being kind of terrible. I've got stories from both of those places that I'll post on if I ever do one of those month-long-Ryan-actually-blogs things again, but for now, it's enough to say "Ryan worked in stores."

Part of the responsibility, other than cleaning up what customers have done to either the bathroom or the electric wheelchairs, scraping frozen chicken breast off of the ground while being stung by bees in January and praying for a quick death, was to set up the displays and make sure everything looks all nice-like. I still feel an impulse, when I'm at a store, to straighten things out.

I was at a Dominick's a few hours ago, and since then I've been trying to figure out if the whole science of displaying things has changed fundamentally since I've stopped stocking things. My non-retail-worker brain has apparently lost the ability to drum up the faintest connection between Gushers and fish sticks (marketed together through the advance of putting a little shelf on the freezer door, which, if filled with glass salsa bottles, makes a bunch of noise when I have picked out my waffles and startles me). Suddenly, it was like the entire grocery store was one big Magic Eye Thing, which is funny because I can hardly ever see the things you're supposed to see. Suddenly it wasn't just "why are the Gushers near the fish?" but

• "Why are there books for sale, and if I grant that one can buy books from a grocery store, why are they all either religious texts, diet books, poker how-tos or John Grisham novels?"



• "How many John Grisham novels could the guy that places orders for the store honestly have thought they were going to sell? These things are like copies of Matthew McConaughey movies in the overstock bins at Blockbuster."



• "What's with this bookshelf of clearance items that clearly have nothing to do with each other? Or is it some sort of game, where if I can figure out how to combine the little wooden house, the bug spray and the shampoo into a weapon, I win something that's actually useful?"



• "Why is there a cooler filled, mostly, with Gatorade, when there's an aisle with Gatorade just that way? Is this for athletes who run into the store while being athletic and desperately need that cool, refreshing blast of blue sports fluid immediately? And even postulating that that is the case, why is the other half of the cooler for soup and cole slaw? There's not even a divider."



• "That's nice, the summer theme they've done up front, putting the kites right next to the patio furniture. Wait. Who the hell buys patio furniture from Dominick's? Maybe I do. I need a patio."

Luckily, I escaped, having found a satisfactory pizza, and sped home to watch a movie I've had for far too long from Netflix and write this nonsense up while I'm still tired enough to think that it's a good idea.

And that is why I don't post anymore.

Murphspot 4

A return to videoblogging to talk about the Pirates, some headbands and, hopefully, confuse the hell out of you.

I'll be returning to writing shortly.

Earth Hour

I got an email from the University the other day, informing me that NU would be participating in Earth Hour, asking students and businesses to voluntarily turn off their lights in an effort to raise awareness about global warming and reduce energy consumption.

I'm afraid I don't really know what to make of it. I'm more or less completely ignorant on climate science, but my understanding is that there's strong evidence for anthropogenic global warming, and I'm willing to buy that. I think it's astonishing how intertwined the whole issue of trying to determine an answer scientifically has become with politics, something which both the left and right are guilty of. But that's not really an issue here, as it's voluntary and I really can't think of any political reason to care if someone wants to turn their lights out.

My issues, I guess, are with the overall "awareness" jive that gets thrown around in the form of wristbands, magnetic ribbon stickers and hour long voluntary black-outs. It seems like a cop-out to me. If you're actually concerned about global warming enough to make a change in your life to minimize any actual anthropogenic effect that does exist, it seems like it's a token gesture to turn out your lights for an hour on a specific day at a specific time. Most of the website seems to be suggesting the same "turn off the lights when you're not in the room/buy compact fluorescent bulbs" that usually get suggested (and which actually make sense even if you reject climate change science, because it's often cheaper), but organizing cities around the world to turn off their lights at a specific time, all at once, strikes me as something designed to make people feel like they're actually doing good without actually doing anything. It reminds me of those gas boycotts that get passed around every once in a while that completely misunderstand the concept of a boycott and the concept of how supply and demand work (if you get a million people to not buy gas on Day X with the intent of forcing oil companies to bring down prices, it accomplishes nothing unless you get them to do it on Day Y, then Day Z and so on. Merely shifting when you buy gas does absolutely nothing, but unfortunately, cutting back on the amount of gas you do use, which would cause the gas companies to drop their prices, actually takes a bit of effort. It seems like the only people that are going to notice that Earth Hour is happening are either people who are participating (and are, hence, already aware of global warming) and people who get emails about it, like me (who are also aware of the awareness campaign) and so I'm not sure among whom this is supposed to be raising awareness.

My other problem is with the timing of it. Apparently, Chicago has been selected as the US "Flagship City", whatever that means. Fine and dandy, and I understand that the organizers are Australian, but this isn't exactly the best time of year to be turning off all the lights at 8pm local time. It's not only completely dark by then (still, because winter will never end) but it's also below 30 degrees C (also, because winter will never end), which minimizes the possibilities for going outside and playing softball instead of playing on the computer. I'm sure it was an effort to pick a time when both the Northern and Southern hemispheres would have moderate weather, but I still think you don't pin "moderate weather" on Chicago. At all. Ever. So, because staying inside a completely darkened house isn't an option and playing by the lake isn't an option, I guess the suggestion would be to hang out in stores which aren't participating, which still reduces the total amount of energy used (because the store's lights would be on anyway) but which feels like it cheapens the thing. Also, you have to spend energy getting to the store that you wouldn't otherwise, so yeah. I'm not sold on Earth Hour.

I guess where I come down on this is that I'm not going to do it (though I'll probably be on the train during that hour anyway) and while I understand the goal, I'm not sure it'll actually accomplish very much in the way of raising awareness among people who, I guess, had never heard of the Global Warming controversy before and think it seems a bit too much like a way to pretend to be doing something while not suffering the inconvenience of actually doing something. If you're worried about global warming, get some light bulbs that use less energy and ride a bike once in a while. Better yet, support nuclear power. Nuclear's gotten a bad rap since Chernobyl* and Three Mile Island**, but it's 30 years later (22 years in the case of Chernobyl) and nuclear plants are safer by orders of magnitude. They're cheaper than they were, they're much cleaner than coal-burning plants (which actually put out more radiation than uranium plants because of radon), which does result in dangerous waste, but the fission products that are actually harmful have relatively short half-lives and are all but gone within 50 years, which we know how to store, and which we can recycle into more power production. The fact that France derives 80% of its power from nuclear plants while we get 20% should say something. It's time to look past the hysterical nonsense and, if pollution and global warming are actually a problem, fix it by switching to nuclear rather than building more and more fossil fuel plants.

*Very bad times, but they really had to try to get it to be as bad as it was, by which I mean that if you're running a nuclear power plant in a corrupt nation which is in bad shape to begin with, you might not want to run unnecessary, dangerous tests while not looking at the status of the reactor, ignoring what the previous shift had done that makes your test a phenominally bad idea, while running everything with a skeleton crew of people who weren't trained to deal with what you were trying to make them do.

**Yeah, partial meltdowns are bad times, but the safeties successfully contained what could have been a terrible disaster, the technicians were able to fix the problem in spite of the fact that they were given incorrect information, that was found to have resulted in zero deaths and which resulted in the equivalent of a chest X-ray's worth of radiation for those who were exposed to radiation from Three Mile Island. It was a successfully prevented disaster, but groups who rail against nuclear power for whatever reason seem to always leave off those first two adverbs.

Back to the Kingdom

If you haven't noticed, I tend to do things for a while, then get bored and give up on them, which is why it's somewhat amazing that I'm still sticking with science as a career and haven't run off to become a juggler. It would be even more amazing if I could actually juggle.

I've recently created yet another Kingdom of Loathing account, which is my third one, I believe, my past two being eaten by the thing that deletes your account when you're inactive for, in my case, three years. For those of you that haven't played, it's a whimsical little turn-based MMORPG that I found out about through one of Lore Sjöberg's old projects, Little Fluffy. I've never really gotten into the whole "become obsessed with it" thing and tend to just treat it as though other people don't exist, but that's fine and dandy and the worst that will happen is that it'll take me longer to defeat the Naughty Sorceress than it would otherwise. I'm fine with this.

Also, for those of you who have no ability to control how much time you spend on things, whether it's RPGs or making cotton candy or looking at carpet swatches, you only get 40 turns per day, and while they roll over, you can only ever have 200 turns saved up. So it's nice for not playing with for a while, then playing with intensely for like half an hour, then forgetting about for a week.

If you happen to play, find "murphspot" and then send me all your meat. I'm a seal clubber this time through (having previously been an accordion thief and a sauceror) and could use some help with all of this nonsense.