College towns in winter

I forgot my phone charger in Iowa City last weekend. I thought I could use two, because I have tendency to forget that fucking thing and I could thus always leave one in my suitcase. This would relive my hypothetical travel hosts of ever having to rush mail an AC adapter. Who knows what the terrorists are up to nowadays? Anyhow, I found the address of the local Verizon store. It was in downtown Champaign. I took the bus there and the bus was empty and when I got to the "Verizon Store" it was actually a porn shop with purple window frames and 2-way windows (?). I didn't think they sold cell phones but I could've found out. I didn't. I took a bus home and there were only 3 people on it (during rush hour) so the bus driver went off-route and dropped all of us off at our front doors. I've never had such service.

This morning in Buckley (pop. 600, maybe) I stopped in the local convenience store. A few years back they were selling smoked whitefish for the holidays. The woman behind the counter didn't know what whitefish was. It snowed last night and my cousin says that the snow on the cornfields makes the ground look like an oreo cookie in milk. I think it looks like driving through cold milk. When I was looking for smoked fish, my cousin was at the Buckley Bank. The Buckley Bank has the most balling candy jar, ever. I don't know what half the candy in that thing is, or where they even procure these treats. Like cherry flavored lifesavers and jellied fruit slices that taste like fresh jam. In my younger years I would follow my uncle into the bank and scoop out candy with both hands and stuff my fanny pack. My uncle smiled while the bank tellers tried to stop me, but they couldn't stop me. You seriously have no idea how good this candy is.

Ask A College Professor Having Trouble with Audiovisual Equipment

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/97714

Yeah.

stuffness

It's raining outside and I want to listen to Mojave 3 and write prose poems about the seasons. I think there is a homegame this weekend which means another day of drunk 50 year olds parading around campustown in "CHIEF" memorabilia while dry-humping the corpse of their dead racist mascot. This is a good reason to leave town and drive through a windfarm. I could be wrong. In fact I am wrong: the Illini are at Ohio State on Saturday. Here is a picture of OSU after their inevitable victory:



Hell yeah dudes you are a bunch of motherfucking champions. It looks someone's girlfriend is getting fingered behind the grocery store tonight. On next week's schedule is a thrilling Big Ten contest between the University of Illinois Fightin' Illini and the New Providence New Jersey Falcons, coached by a really large log of soppressata and a hot dog that was deep fried.

untitled

Attn Urbana/Champaign:

Good work making me fucking nauseous by playing the star spangled banner over the bells at 1PM. And good work to whatever idiot it was who planted 2997 American flags in the quad. As if being reduced to meat weren't enough, I'm sure the entirety of the victims love being reduced even further to symbols. Have fun with metonymy you cornfed assholes; I'll be blowing you kisses while I ride the atom bomb out of the chute.

http://gawker.com/5357371/happy-first-post%20911-911

Hey guys my favorite band is Queensryche

My favorite band is Queensryche.

8:37 AM

beep beep honk beep beep beep honk honk beep beeeeeeeeep

Yo guys

I am the pilot of the moon, I am worth my weight in chicken nuggets

Look at this youtube comment:

5dave1 (4 days ago)
SUPERNAUT ROCKS!!!!!!!!!! Yeah! This sone got me through Viet Nam!!!!!!!

HOLY FUCK

I NEED TO GET ON THIS SHIT.

So like in a few weeks I move to Urbana, Illinois. I will be in school for Urban Planning and I will undoubtedly be updating this more often, as I will to distract myself from the fact that I am a graduate student.

I love your nuts.

Crimean Tatars

Now with funnier hats than regular tatars:



Weyman Tisdale died. For people who don't know who that is, he was one half of the Sacramento Kings in the SNES version of NBA Jam. He also was a jazz bassist with one leg.

yeah

This dude with whom I went to high school, his name was Flockhart and his mom never would walk the dog. The Flockhart family dog was a poodle, which was funny because high school Flockhart was sort of the living version of Biff from the Back to the Future movies. Anyhow Mother Flockhart would go out onto the front lawn with the dog on a leash, stand in the same spot, and smoke a Virginia Slim while the dog took a shit, and then flick the butt onto the lawn. As a result there was a perfect circle of dog droppings and virginia slim butts in this one spoton their front lawn. For fucking real you could calculate pi on that ring.

Five Seasons Center

Cedar Rapids is the "City of Five Seasons," and the fifth season is "a time to enjoy the other seasons," or "fun," depending on who you ask. Yeah I said it - fucking "fun" is the fifth season of Cedar Rapids. Look that shit up!

The dudes I meet who live in Cedar Rapids seem like they were really good at high school sports. That is the grand unifying factor of the male population - wearing Oakleys, white shirts and white shoes, and having one time been a blue chip high school athlete. Only now they have paunches and sunken eyes.

I was at a party in Waterloo last winter. Mind you I am only 25, but that night I was rolling on a serious "grandpa" vibe - too much slutty dancing for my old bones. By 1 AM booze had run out and people had just started the "NO MORE BOOZE" panic, and then two fat old dudes in comic book t-shirts come cruising in with two cases of forties.

I immediately like these men. One of them tells me this story about going to see the "Clash of the Titans" tour - featuring Megadeth, Anthrax, Slayer, and a young Alice in Chains opening - at the Five Seasons Center in Cedar Rapids in 1991.

Old man of the party weaved a wicked tale, basically going into great detail in describing the special type of person who went to thrash metal concerts in 1991 Cedar Rapids. One of the tour's gimmicks was that the order of bands was determined every night independently, to the surprise of the audience. It shouldn't be surprising that everyone wanted to hear Slayer first and foremost and could really give a fuck about Dave Mustaine. So after Alice in Chains played (they played first, that part was always set), Old Man recalls hearing a person behind him yell this:

"SLAY-"

(pause)

"FUCKING-"

(longer pause)

"-EEEEEEERRRRRRRRRRRRrrrrrrrrr"

So next time you think about Slayer, think about Cedar Rapids in the year 1991, and the smells of burned cereal grains and industrial wastewater, and oakley sunglasses, and someone screaming into your ear "SLAY-FUCKING-EEEEEEEERRRRRRRRR"

This shit is the shit (right here)

This is all kinds of shit going on.

Shit is going down like you wouldn't believe.

Shit is so hard.

Look at this shit. Would you look at this shit?

Someday you will remember how you read this, and you will think "I was younger then," and then you will decide that everything as it exists in your (future) present is not as awesome as it was the moment you were getting down with my shit.

Shit is all kinds of shit.

We're in the shit right here.

HAPPY PASSOVER.

The best passover meal I had was courtesy of Moroccan Jews. Remember the Moroccan Jews next time you're eating brisket that feels like a shoe sole. Somehow, someday, somewhere there is a Moroccan Jew rubbing saffron-spiced Salmon all over his hairy, Semitic chest.

Balls.

One of our hot water pipes is cracked. There is a cloud of steam arising from this small hole in the downstairs bathroom. We found one of the cats in the basement and it was warm and apparently been huddled next to the steam leak like one of the ocean-floor microorganism.

My brother was in middle school choir and his choir was to march in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. I don't think it was the actual parade - probably a rehearsal, as I would've remembered if the incident I were about to describe was on Thanksgiving Day - but my brother was late for an event because he was busy in the restroom and took like 45 minute shits during this point of his life. Already 10 minutes late, I finally heard him wash his hands, open the bathroom door, and bolt out of the house while wearing his "I Hear America Singing" red sweatshirt. Now I was home alone, and I went upstairs to use the restroom but it was clogged with my brother's toilet paper. I flushed the toilet about 5 times, which of course caused it to flood.

Water streamed out of the top of the bowl and started to drip downstairs onto the clean clothes in the laundry room below. For reasons I don't understand the lid never shut on the toilet so water kept flowing out. I ran outside and knowing no other recourse knocked awkwardly at the door of my next door neighbors', the Iranian Jews.

Mind you there are only like 45 Iranian Jews in the world, six of whom were my next door neighbors and one other being Navid from the new "90210." So of these 45 left in the world I am greeted by the mother, who speaks poor English and who I insist must come to my house. Following me she runs up to our bathroom and sees the puddle of poop and pee water. She grabs a handful of towels, and throws them right onto the floor. Then she makes the wise decision (me being 9 at the time was unable to make) of shutting off the water flow to the toilet by shutting off the valve behind the bowl. So then we stood there in the piss soaked towels and she told me to wash my hands, and I did. I don't think she had been in my house before and I don't think came in there again. My father made me redo the laundry. The Iranian Jews moved out on a random day. Then the raccoons took over their house, and the heater almost exploded, and the grass grew a foot high.

Have em saying

There was an ad today in the NYRB for the Norman Mailer Writing Colony. I'm sure the schedule involves looking at dudes in "that way" and loudly, forcefully describing your female sexual conquests in a room with mixed company. I need not mention that the colony is located in Provincetown, Massachusetts.

I have nothing to do right now

My coworker suggested I do a crossword puzzle and I said "OK," but then I suck at crosswords so I tried sudoku. I used to be good at Sudoku but that was years ago and now the things at which I shine are 90's alt rock trivia and picking wine pairings. What would really make my day is if the one of the dudes from like Hum started a winery.

Speaking of Hum they had a reunion show last NYE in Chicago and apparently Matt Talbott has lost all sense of tonality in his singing. Listen to this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3cqw71lKv8

Brace yo selves.

Week 2 in racism being over. Last night I stood naked before my bathroom mirror trying to utter racist epithets but all that came out was a jarble of consonants. It was fucking weird. I blame society.

In other stories this shit is the front fucking page of the NYTimes website:



Headline is: WHITE HOUSE UNBUTTONS FOR UNFORMAL DRESS CODE.

Larry Summers and Rahm Emanual, why are your jackets still on? Larry Summers looks like the type of dude whose candy store mysteriously closes after 6 months of business, and in that pic Rahm looks like he's got on Siouxsie Sioux makeup. Look at this picture of Larry Summers.



"MYEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEERG"

So um Larry do you have anything else to add?



"MYEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEERG"

Good to know. Check out Sheed being all "yes we can!":



Never forget.

I'm so doing this

http://www.cwtv.com/upload/file/cw-90210-clean-clear-video-upload

It is theoretically impossible that I will not win. I've already done the calculations. They're right here on my desk. Fuck you.

Some shit

The reason I never updated for more or less the entire month of December was as such: I would wake up at 9, go to work, and sell wine until 5 or 6. And then I would work on grad school applications until 10. And then I would sleep. And then I would go back to work and be hit with questions like "I want your best wine in a blue bottle," or "I want a merlot but not a sweet one."

One quick note for all casual wine drinkers: 99% of the wine which you see on the market has precisely no residual sugar in it. It is all converted to alcohol during fermentation. This is how you get "wine," and not "Manischewitz." Sure, dessert wines, ports, sec and demi-sec Champagnes, Moscato d'Asti and the like, Boone's Farm and the like, cream sherry, and most German Riesling on the shelf have residual sugar. But that's it. Merlot, Shiraz, Pinot Grigio, Cabernet, etc? No, not sweet. What people usually confuse as "sweet" is usually the a full-bodied wine combined with the fruit character from the grapes, and usually lack of tannin. They get that oily texture and fruit coming together, and none of the sandpapery feel from the tannin, and somewhere along their synapses these combined sensations convert to a word which we pronounce "sweet" and which signifies the presence of sugar. But there is no sugar. Note.

Speaking of beverage nerddom, my favorite customers are beer customers. Wine customers generally have an idea what they want, and also trust us more to make good decisions (which I think we usually do) when it comes to pairings, gifts, recommendations. Beer drinkers assume that since their beer of choice is Guinness (because their great-great grandpa was Irish and they are therefore just as Irish as I am, shalom) and because GUINNESS RULES they are therefore beer experts and need NO HELP of salespeople like my coworker who has tried over 4,000 beers and is an excellent homebrewer. We call these customers mustache people. Why?, I don't know, they probably have mustaches. Also note some customers talk about how FUCKED UP they get from drinking two Guinnesses without knowing that Guinness has a smaller ABV than Budweiser. I just ruined all your Irish pride.

Anyhow one day a customer wanted me to help him pick a keg. I suggested to him Pilsner Urquell and when he asked me to describe it I said it was a "golden lager" at which point he interrupted me and said "BAH, I hate lagers." He then asked me to describe Sierra Nevada, which I said was a Pale Ale and then "Bah, I hate ales" (yes he really said "Bah"). Keep in mind that by saying that he hates ales and lagers, he denotes that the only beer he likes is lambic (which is sort of an ale anyway), hard cider, and kvass. Mustache people.

I'm kvetching. Pride of the Irish y'all.

-9

This one's for you, Harrie.

There are two bank thermometers a block apart in Iowa City. In the afternoon the US Bank thermometer, because it gets some daytime sun, consistently reads about 10 degrees higher than the Midwest One thermometer. And right now the US Bank thermometer is reading "-9".

People who say "talking about the weather is boring" has never lived in the midwest. Science fact right there. This weather shit is fucking epic. People write books about the Iowa weather, and you know what: the books are actually pretty good. I probably will never experience anything as intense as weather in Iowa. And I've been to concentration camps.

In fact, I was going to catalogue, right here, the intense weather that I've experienced in my six years here, but I realized it would've taken too much time.

But for example, the Saturday of flood week last June I was part of a large crew of sandbaggers working by the University library. I was in a chain of people moving sandbags down towards the levee. After doing this two hours, a guy with a megaphone tells the crew that there is a severe thunderstorm warning and that we must leave. So we go to a bar. And the baseball game on the bar TV is interrupted by the local weatherman, saying that we're in a tornado watch. I go outside and there are two shirtless people. One minute the wind blows and it is humid, and then another minute the wind blows in the opposite direction and it is crisp and dry. Then it hails. Then I look up and clouds are moving in all kinds of directions, forming a funnel cloud. The people I am with decide we should all take off our shirts so we do and we flash cars. Then it is sunny, then it rains again. It is downpouring across the street but sunny and warm on our side. The bartender is blaring country music. Every cloud in the sky, of which we have a clear view, is moving in a unique direction. The funnel cloud is to the south. Then the funnel cloud passes.