It seems I'm the first one in the community to post in the year 2003, which is further testament of how little there is to do in Stuart. Actually I've never really done anything exciting for New Year's Eve, since I don't drink and don't like parties, but being here makes it oh-so-much-worse since I know only family members (my parents having moved here after I started college). Regardless, happy New Year, may your Christmases be bright, keep your eyes on Auld Lang Syne, and may 2003 bring us an end to Thunder Stix, Sex and the City, fraternities, car commercials that depict large trucks doing things they can't really do, Avril Lavigne's popularity, Lucas' insurmountable lead in the NFL picks, shameless extreme sports scenes in movies and advertisements, and the NFL's ridiculous rules against team touchdown celebrations.

A few months ago my parents temporarily lost their sanity and decided to purchase property at the top of a mountain in Waynesville, North Carolina. This weekend, we drove up there to meet with builders about putting a house on that land. After 11 hours in the car with my parents, I found myself in a place that makes Stuart, FL look like New York City.

First of all, let me say that all the stereotypes you've heard about people who live in rural areas of the south are completely true. People really do wear overalls and John Deere hats, and they really do speak a language that is unintelligible to everyone who did not grow up in the south. Waynesville, for example, is referred to as "Winesvull" in Southern. My old roommate Bryan, who doesn't have much room to talk since he's from New Jersey (aka The Garbage State), used to say that you could have a PhD in neuroscience but if you talk in a heavy southern drawl you sound like you never got through 3rd grade.

Our property is on Wolfpen Mountain, so named because wolves lived on it before rich city folk came, built winding roads that are inaccessible in the winter, and erected monstrous 4-bedroom eyesores on it. Apparently some other wildlife still live there because there is a huge sign at the entrance to our neighborhood that say "No Hunting". This sign is necessary because Waynesville is the type of place where, upon spotting a deer, the average resident would pull out his rifle and shoot it as a reflexive action. In fact, the one-page sports section of the local newspaper on Friday featured ATV racing as its lead story and hunting as every other story.

The one-page length of the sports section is especially amusing when you consider that the religion section gets two or three pages. I quickly discovered that religion was a big deal in Waynesville when I attempted to find a sports bar to watch the Patriots game on Sunday. Surprisingly I did find one, but like every single other place of business in the entire city, it was closed on Sunday. There is ONE restaurant that is open on Sundays, and because of the lack of competition it was absolutely mobbed. Then there was the storefront that had the phrase "how do you see Jesus?" painted on it next to an image of Our Lord and Savior depicted in used car paint. Like the kind that you use to advertise that your 1986 Pontiac Sunbird has low mileage and AC with neon windshield paint. And the store that featured this fine work of art was a drugstore. Classy.

Second only to religion in the hearts of Waynesville residents is NASCAR. 90% of the people I saw were wearing some sort of auto racing article of clothing featuring the name or number of their favorite driver. Then there was Waynesville's Auto Racing Mecca: a barbecue restaurant called Fat Buddies. Every free square inch of wall space was plastered with some piece of NASCAR memorabilia including, but not limited to, actual hoods of racing cars, race-used tires as picture frames for photos famous drivers, a Dale Earnhardt memorial wall with magazine clippings about his death, actual front bumpers of racing cars, and light fixtures made of wheel rims.

Finally, a few other items spotted around town:

-a bumper sticker (on a pickup truck of course, the vehicle-of-choice in Waynesville) that read "So many cats, so few recipes".

-a store that sold only confederate flags, including one with the word "Redneck" emblazoned on it in giant letters.

-numerous "antique" (read: junk) stores, including one that was selling a giant (at least 6 feet tall) purple elephant and a giant yellow gorilla. I have compiled the following list of businesses that could use these items: miniature golf course.

But thankfully, after four days of "yonder" and "reckon", I have escaped Waynesville and returned to the big city of Stuart, FL: "If You Can Read This, You're Not Old Enough to Live Here".

My family is going on a wild goose chase for the next few days, so I won't have internet access for awhile. As such, I need to do my NFL picks a couple of days early. The standings right now are:

Lucas: 10-6 (151-90)
Me: 7-9 (138-103)

PHI at NYG: PHI. I still contend that the schizophrenic Giants won't make the playoffs.

KC at OAK: OAK. Team Choke got too many home games this year to really pull off their usual collapse. Plus the Chiefs are decimated by injuries.

BAL at PIT: BAL. It's so hard for me to accurately pick the Ravens games, they're my version of how the Titans are for Lucas. Damn mediocre teams.

DAL at WAS: WAS. Another clunker for the Cowboys. Why are they in every crappy boring game that takes place?

TEN at HOU: TEN. Finally I can safely pick the outcome of a Titans game.

CIN at BUF: BUF. Not that Drew Bledsoe has played well in the last month, but the Bengals aren't going to win two in a row.

ATL at CLE: ATL. I know a lot of NFC teams that are scared to death of the Falcons right now. Any team besides Tampa Bay better hope to God that they don't have to play Michael Vick in the playoffs.

MIN at DET: MIN. The Vikes have been playing well lately. The Lions haven't played well since the Scott Mitchell to Herman Moore era.

MIA at NE: NE. Did anyone watch the Pats game last week and notice a striking similarity to the Rams in terms of horrendous offensive line play and lack of offensive game plan? You can almost see Charlie Weis throwing his hands up in the air, as it's hard to call any interesting plays when your QB has half a second before he's running for his life or on his back.

CAR at NO: NO. At home with their backs to the wall, Jim Haslett will kill somebody if the Saints don't win.

JAX at IND: IND. Both of these teams let me down last week, therefore I will pick neither. I can't do that? Eh, I'll pick the Colts then.

GB at NYJ: GB. All I heard about last week was how wonderful Chad Pennington is, despite the fact that he looks like he's about 12 and sounds like he was born in a swamp and married his cousin. Brett Favre better show the rookie who the most talented hick QB in the league is.

AZ at DEN: DEN. They may suck, but it's the Cardinals. At least it's not another embarassing 8,000-person home game.

SEA at SD: SEA. That choking sound you hear is the Chargers for the second year in a row.

TB at CHI: TB. Actually the Bucs may want to lose this one on purpose, since a 4 seed would almost guarantee them of playing Atlanta in the first round.

SF at STL: SF. 49ers: not playing any of their starters. Rams: can't play any of their offensive starters since they've all been injured thanks to John St. Clair.

My Grandmother: "Turn off the fan, you're going to catch a cold"
Me: "But temperature doesn't cause sickness, germs do"
My Grandmother: "Don't tell me what makes you sick, I've been alive longer than you have"

This coming from the same person who leaves the microwave door open after using it to give it time to "cool down", since she thinks that it cooks food using heat in the same way that an oven does.

Plot summary of an actual, honest-to-goodness Christmas movie broadcast on an actual, honest-to-goodness cable station last night:

Santa must save Rudolph and Frosty from a wizard.

A quick check of the Internet Movie Database reveals this gem of a plot summary for the same film:


Long ago the Lady Boreal placed the evil Winterbolt under a magic spell, and put the last of her magic into the nose of a newborn reindeer: Rudolph. But now Winterbolt's awake. He gives Frosty's family magic amulets to keep them from melting until the Fourth of July so that Frosty and Rudolph can help Lilly's circus and Milton can marry his girlfriend on the highwire, and Santa will use his sleigh to make sure everybody gets back to the North Pole in time...which leaves Winterbolt alone at the North Pole on the Fourth...


Nothing says Christmas like evil wizards, circuses, and the voice of Mickey Rooney as Santa Claus.

Happy Holidays
From all the Festival staff
And Happy New Year

If you're like most Americans depicted in television ads, you wait until the day before Christmas to go shopping, at which point you go to Wal-mart and throw everything you see on the shelves into a basket and pay for it.

In order to make your job that much easier, here are a few suggestions for last-minute gifts that are sure to please even the pickiest friend or loved one.

The Chia Pet
The Clapper
Ginsu Knives
The Salad Shooter
The Tater Twister (apparently no longer for sale, check Ebay for this one)
The Egg Wave
The Ding King

I can only personally vouch for the Clapper and the Egg Wave as viable Christmas gifts. I got my mom the Clapper when I was 7 (as I child I was especially easy to influence with catchy jingles), but we were never really happy with its performance. Coughing near the TV would cause it to spontaneously turn on, while repeated loud clapping would do nothing. The old lady in the commercial seems happy with it though.

Sitcoms are great fun and cheap to make (until the actors start demanding a million dollars per episode), but lately the trend has been towards one-hour dramas. An hour gives producers and writers more time to develop characters and craft a good story as well as run the same commercials more than once. Now instead of being exposed to the complete absurdity that is a pickup truck towing an airplane so fast that it lifts up in the air (this would be feasible if the truck were pulling the plane at, say, 180 miles an hour) once, I get to see it twice. Hooray for television.

One network that has made its living on the hour-long drama is the WB. While at first they decided to fill their lineup with well-crafted sitcoms like the Wayans Brothers and Muscle, the fledgling network quickly (after two seasons of ratings in the toilet) decided to shift to a more drama-heavy schedule. So now we get hip teens and twentysomethings overdramatizing simple problems with snappy in-your-face dialogue. Dawson or Pacey, Dawson or Pacey, Dawson or Pacey? Apparently this kind of important decision takes about three seasons and hundreds of witty one-liners. It's a good thing Katie Holmes isn't our nation's president. And the best thing is that all the characters are interchangeable. Take Clark from Smallville and drop him into Dawson's Creek (well not literally into the creek, maybe on that rowboat with Dawson. Imagine the sexual tension and witty cracks...) and no one would notice the difference. At least until Clark lifted up a car or ran faster then a speeding bullet, at which point someone would make a snappy comment about his super powers and their impact on his performance in the sack and then he would sleep with Jen or Jack or both.

Then there is the formula that every other network uses: take some sort of profession (lawyer, teacher, police, medicine, crime scene investigator, plumber...) and glamorize it in the most outrageous way possible. Did you know that not only did our high school teachers educate us, but they also all slept with each other on school grounds? And that being a crime scene investigator is so easy due to the immense amount of physical evidence that every bumbling criminal leaves behind that workers can stand around and zing each other with sizzling one-liners? And that doesn't even begin to describe TVs portrayal of the legal profession.

Lawyers on TV are either young, attractive, and moral or old and wise. Nowhere are the sleazy ambulance-chasing personal injury lawyers that I see ads for here in south Florida (there are plenty of opportunity for personal injury around here, what with all the blind 80 year olds behind the wheel of cars the size of school buses). Instead every case is fraught with controversy and criminal intrigue, and the best part is that a judge hears it within 24 hours no matter what. And the prosecutor gets to sleep with the defense attorney.

I almost did it. I almost picked those stupid Dolphins to lose today, my gut instinct telling me their December collapse would come this year as it has every year since I began following football. Alas, I did not go with my gut, and the football gods made me pay. Here are my picks for tomorrow, and I'm going with my gut for all of them.

HOU at WAS: WAS. Will the QB carousel continue or is Ramsey pencilled in for the last 2 games? Either way this game is meaningless.

TEN at JAX: JAX. Upset special! The Titans have been riding high after their Monday night win, but short week + coming off big win against defending champs + comparatively easier team this week = letdown. That plus every AFC team is going to end up at 9-7 on the season.

DET at ATL: ATL. Some of the "experts" on ESPN have been predicting that the Falcons would miss the playoffs. This would require that they lose their remaining two creampuff games while the pitiful Giants won both of their tough matchups. Ain't gonna happen.

CHI at CAR: CAR. Yuck. A prayer goes out to all the poor fans attending this game. I'm sorry.

NO at CIN: NO. Although the Saints will be exiting the playoffs quickly, as they have so many times in their stories history, the Bengals won't have quite enough to topple them here.

NYG at IND: IND. See my previous comments about Atlanta. Ain't gonna happen.

BUF at GB: GB. The Bills aren't afraid of cold Lambeau weather, but they are afraid of a team with any semblance of an offensive attack, since they have no D to speak of.

STL at SEA: STL. The Rams have won exactly 1 road game all year. 1! And that was against the pitiful Cardinals. Lucky for them that the 'Hawks are equally as pitiful.

SD at KC: KC. Priest Holmes may be out, but Mike Cloud is no slouch either, and the Chargers are such wannabes. Was that Doug Flutie I saw at the end of last week's game?

DEN at OAK: DEN. December swoon team gets to play at home, but the Broncos will be fighting for their lives and they have the much-superior rushing game.

CLE at BAL: BAL. Wacky Dennis Northcutt-related antics aside, the Browns really aren't very good. And when the matchup looks even, always go with the home team.

PIT at TB: TB. It's about time for the Bucs' little streak to end, but not at home against the streaky Steelers. Lose to an expansion team and I don't pick you for awhile, it's that simple.

NYJ at NE: NE. Oh man, that Monday night game was painful to watch. This Sunday night matchup means I can watch again. Let's hope that my euphoria at watching the Dolphins choke is not smothered by another egg like the Pats laid last week.

Well college football season has blissfully ended until Unnecessary Spurious Bowl Game Week, so now the NFL is making my job harder and having games on Saturdays also (at least we've managed to avoid Thursday games so far this year). I went 10-6 last week (131-94 overall) while Lucas again couldn't keep pace and went 8-8 (141-84 overall). His lead could be single-digits soon. Or it could be even bigger.

MIA at MIN: MIA. The Pats desperately need the Vikings to win. I desperately need an upset to pick. The Dolphins are an unimpressive 2-4 on the road. The Vikings have been playing very well lately. But the Vikings defense...hoo boy.

SF at AZ: SF. Again, it would be really nice to have an upset-worthy game here, but the Cardinals just plain suck. This is why there is no point in watching any NFC games for the rest of the season, matchups like this one.

PHI at DAL: PHI. And then there's this crap-fest. I don't pick the Dallas Cowboys to win against the worst teams in the league, never mind against one of the best. Come on NFL, at least give me a shot to overtake Lucas.

Sunday picks will come tomorrow night...

If you're like me, then you watch television with a critical eye. Besides just enjoying the drunken revelry of the Real World Las Vegas crew, you yell at their television visages when they do something stupid or burst into tears over essentially nothing.

Over the next few days here at the Festival (assuming I survive tomorrow morning's plane takeoff through 20 mph winds and landing into 19 mph winds and rain), I'm going to give my salute to and review of television. Feel free to leave comments with your favorite shows, commercials, or other TV absurdities.

The first major genre is of course the sitcom, during which writers manage to cram 5 minutes of story into 10 minutes of ads and 15 minutes of predictable one-liner jokes. Most sitcoms are simply vehicles for aging stars or situational gimmicks, so most of you reading this are probably quliafied enough to create your own. Here are some tips when pitching your own gimmick to each network:

CBS: Your show must include an overweight, unintelligent man married to a very attractive and witty woman. Apparently years of market research have determined that most nightly prime time viewers are out of shape and a little slow and that they appreciate a character who, while similar to them in appearance, has a much hotter wife and nicer house. If possible, your show's male lead should work a low-paying job while the female lead should be quite content to stay home and take care of the kids except for the inevitable "husband jealous of wife getting a job" episode.

ABC: Your show should feature 2 parents, 3 kids (the younger one, the middle one, and the older one), and 1 pet (most likely a large dog like a golden retriever). While these shows are easy to write since you can reuse the plots of every other similar sitcom (older child gets driver's license, middle child gets girlfriend, etc.), it becomes a problem when the younger child goes through puberty and looks older than the middle child, who mysteriously disappears from the family to pursue unprofitable movie career (see Jonathan Taylor Thomas on Home Improvement).

FOX: Your show should be animated, about the supernatural, or involve people getting hurt by animals or chased by the police. Sometimes FOX airs programs that seem more suited for another network (Malcolm In the Middle is exactly like an ABC show, right down to the middle child pursuing a movie career), in which case the shows will be critically acclaimed since a critic's expectation of a FOX show is incredibly low. The good news is, no matter how bad your show is it will run for a few years (Futurama, anyone?). The bad news is, even if your show is good FOX will change its schedule repeatedly until even your most dedicated fans have no idea when the show is on.

NBC: Bad news writers, there is precious little room on NBC for sitcoms amidst their various incarnations of Law and Order and random doctor shows, and most of the sitcoms they have are at least 5 years old. Having a long-running show is great for the giant cash cow that is syndication, but there is increasing pressure to come up with new ideas and plot twists (or different combinations of characters that should have sex with each other) with the same old actors, who are now demanding a million dollars an episode to play a one-dimensional character that you or I could easily play.

The ultimate sitcom, the bar by which all others are judged, is of course Full House, which not only had the older, middle, and younger children at ages to maximize the time the show could stay on the air and the obligatory golden retriever, but instead of two parents they had 4 (counting Lori Loughlin). And once the show ended its run, all of the actors went on to fantastic careers: Bob Saget of course hosted America's Funniest Home Videos, Dave Coulier hosted equally-inane America's Funniest People, John Stamos married Rebecca Romijn (I didn't necessarily say fantastic acting careers), Candace Cameron married hockey's Valeri "I'm not as good as Pavel" Bure, and the Olsen twins have starred in a number of straight-to-video movies and multiple sitcoms where they basically play themselves as they count down the days until they turn 18 and can really cash in by starring in porn. Isn't TV wonderful?

I was going to leave this as a comment at Minutia Press, but I started ranting too long and figured I'd post the whole thing here. Ron posted about the CS faculty/grad student holiday party. Whoever ordered the catering obviously did not have graduate students in mind:

1. caviar.
2. smoked fish on bagel chips.
3. "mini beef wellington" that contained no actual meat.

These are not fill-em-up grad student foods. Such appropriate hors d'oeuvres would be:

1. those mini hot dogs wrapped in croissants
2. scallops wrapped in bacon
3. cheese cubes

I stress the cheese cubes, as these are the most important of all. If you know me in real life, you've probably already heard that my wedding will take place on a hovercraft and will feature Less than Jake for musical entertainment. Forgetting for a moment that I have no girlfriend, never mind one tolerant enough to let me butcher our eventual wedding with punk music, I have now decided that for food at the reception I will have the above three items along with those big, soft cookies with the M&M's in them that they sell at Sam's Club.

Unless the future Mrs. Hill Festival is vegetarian, in which case I guess we're stuck with just the cheese and cookies. And I'm sure Ron will send along some pizza.

OK, at this point I'm ready to say that all known bugs have been ironed out, so if you find any more issues please leave a comment or contact me. Speaking of contacting, you'll notice that my contact page has my AOL IM screen name for easy responses to any interactive Festival events or just to heckle or berate the author.

Also give a warm welcome to the two newest members of the now-inappropriately-named topbar: Christie and Ben. If you have a blog that you feel is worthy of inclusion then let me know. The only criteria are it must be someone I know in some capacity and they must post semi-regularly (where I am the final judge of semi-regularity).

I completed my one final today, despite having to put my braing:

Archives

Not Working:

Comments
Permalinks

The permalinks I can fix tonight after my exam and running my errands, but if anyone can tell me why my comments are not only spawning a new window but also opening in the main window (despite the fact that my code is pretty much identical to -273 and Llamas Galore in this regard) please let me know.

I know the comment link is broken right now. I will fix it as soon as possible. If anything else is broken, please don't bug me about it yet. I probably know about it and just haven't had time to fix it.

*Note: If you abuse your newfound comment privileges, I will delete them* :-)

I have a psychological disadvantage on the Advanced Algorithms (cs441) exam tomorrow, my only exam. You see, last Sunday I turned in my Databases individual project, thus ending my homework for the semester. With my only exam not until tomorrow, I kicked back and did my research and slacked off for the ensuing week, a much deserved break after a hellish week of finishing two databases projects and an algorithms problem set. Unfortunately, after a few days of not doing any work my brain assumes it is in vacation mode and shuts itself down. However, it is now time to jar my brain back into action for exactly two and a half hours, and so far I've had to drag it kicking and screaming. It is situations like these where I would much prefer being able to take exams anytime I wish before a certain day. If this were the case, I would've passed or failed this exam last week and would be relaxing by the pool in Flore-da right now.

Last week was the Billboard Music Awards, which featured among other acts skateboarders doing "ollies" and "grinding" to the sound of a tie-less Avril Lavigne performing her smash hit "Sk8r Boi" and Nelly, Ali, Murphy Lee and the rest of the St. Lunatics emerging from a gigantic-ly lame oven to sing "Hott innn Herre" (some additional consonants provided by Nelly, others by the Festival). But the most shocking and disturbing event of the evening was when Michael Jackson made an appearance live via satellite to present an award.

In case you've mercifully missed the news in the last few months, Jackson has been getting steadily weirder and weirder (how it's possible at this point is anyone's guess). While appearing in court during his lawsuit accusing his record label of racism against him (I don't even think the label knows which race he's supposed to be anymore), he wore a surgical mask to hide a botched surgery that has left him basically without a nose and hobbled around on crutches like an invalid due to a bite from a garden spider on his toe. He has two children, both apparently named "Prince Michael the Second", who are only seen in public with large nets over their heads like beekeepers. No one knows who the mother of either of the children is, and he dangled the younger Prince Michael out a four-story window while in France last month (why he was in France with his children during his big trial is also anyone's guess). Add to this his past troubles keeping his hands off of other people's small children, the fact he owns a giant private ranch with carnival rides and giraffes, and the fact that he hasn't released a successful or critically-acclaimed album in at least a decade, and you've got one messed up dude with no real place in today's music business.

Yet at every mildly-significant musical award show, Michael Jackson is inevitably trotted out and paraded around for a bit. Even after his performance at the MTV Video Music Awards this year, where he gave an acceptance speech for an "Artist of the Millennium" award that does not actually exist (he was inexplicably invited on stage to receive a cake in honor of his birthday), he still managed to find his way into the Billboard show.

It would be one thing if, despite all of his eccentricities, Jacko was still a successful musician, but the fact is he isn't. He hasn't had an album with a mainstream hit single since "Dangerous" and hasn't really been a force in the entertainment industry since the 1980's. Why then is he still recognized at music award shows as a top artist rather than as a curiosity more suited for VH1 Where are They Now? More importantly, how does he have custody of children after his high-profile molestation accusations? And the most mind-numbing question of all, why does he still have legions of fans whose presence were the reason that Prince Michael The Younger made his foray out the window? Between him and Pete Rose, popular support seems to gravitate towards the odd and the criminal.

Last week I was 9-7 in NFL picks to move to 121-88. Lucas slipped a bit and went 7-9 to move to 133-76. Every little bit of catching-up counts, even if it's too little too late.

SEA at ATL: ATL. Besides watching Michael Vick rush for over 200 yards against the Seahawks' incredibly bad run defense, this one will be fun to watch because Jeff George makes his first start of the year against the team that tossed him away.

SD at BUF: SD. Not that I think the Chargers are good, but Buffalo's defense is so bad and they are so demoralized after another pasting by the Patriots that it shouldn't be much of a challenge.

NYJ at CHI: CHI. Upset special! As bad as the Bears look, the Jets' pass defense is near the bottom of the league and Dick Jauron will pull out some wacky trick plays.

JAX at CIN: JAX. Lots of so-called "experts" are picking the Bengals in this game, which makes me wonder if we've been watching the same NFL season.

IND at CLE: IND. Those lucky, lucky Cleveland Browns. They can't be lucky ever week though.

TB at DET: TB. If the Lions can't be the Cardinals, there's not much hope for them this season.

OAK at MIA: OAK. The December swoon teams collide in what may be the Dolphins' only chance to make the playoffs. Ricky Williams sure looked good against the crappy Bears, lets see how well he runs when his team is behind.

MIN at NO: NO. The Vikings are playing better lately, but it's too late now.

WAS at PHI: PHI. Steve Spurrier has now gone through all of his quarterbacks as starters twice. Assuming Patrick Ramsey gets picked a few times this week, the cycle begins again next Sunday.

CAR at PIT: PIT. The Panthers looked so good last week, too bad it was against a college team.

BAL at HOU: BAL. The Ravens let me down in my upset pick last week, they would be wise not to disappoint me again...

KC at DEN: DEN. Wow do the Broncos look bad right now, but the Chiefs are about due for one of those games where their defense gives up 39 points.

DAL at NYG: NYG. Set your snooze alarm for the conclusion of this game, it should be boring as hell.

GB at SF: SF. I know Lucas will pick the Packers and I need to at least try to gain some ground on him.

AZ at STL: STL. Bulgermania returns! But unfortunately so does the awful Rams offensive line. They are playing the Cardinals though, and the current St. Louis team usually beats the former St. Louis team.

NE at TEN: NE. My beloved Patriots on Monday night against a gutsy Titans team. Luckily they can still make the playoffs even if they lose this game, but let's not tempt fate guys.

Last night, in a continuing effort to acclimate myself to cold weather-type things, I went ice skating. I am probably doomed to never be able to skate well, since I never learned how to roller skate or rollerblade when I was a kid, and my first ice skating experience occurred at a shopping mall in Alabama. This doesn't stop me from every year going skating two or three times, but the infrequency in which I skate is not helping the learning process. Each year I go through the same progression from taking small steps while grabbing the wall to skating next to the wall with my hand above the railing to walking on the ice away from the wall to "skating" proper, but then I go 9 months without laying eyes on ice skates and have to repeat the whole process the next year. "Muscle memory" apparently doesn't work when you've only done something ten times in your life.

And even at the end of a winter of skating sessions it's not like I am able to skate like a normal person. For one thing, I am never totally in control of where I'm going or what I'm doing. Sometimes I spin around in a circle, sometimes I veer off to the side in the path of many people, sometimes I go perfectly straight, but all the time it's painfully clear that the skates control me rather than vice versa. Most people go push...glide...push...glide... while my skating is more like push...stumble stumble stumble...push...spread my arms out like wings so as not to lose my balance. There is also the whole issue of stopping. My method of stopping involves either gliding until my velocity slows to zero or running into a wall.

I am convinced that if I just went skating on a more regular basis I could at least master a few basic skills, like not endangering the people around me, but I don't think I'll ever have the balance to play alongside Full Professor Cytron on the Blast.

The Festival is getting a facelift! As an excuse to switch to Movabletype and include pictures of circus animals on my site, I'm redesigning the page. I know you will all miss my current retro color scheme as much as I will, but you'll soon come to love and embrace the ability to leave comments and resize the window without the link bar text-wrapping onto the next line.

I'm still ironing out a few stylesheet issues and commissioning the local artist to design a flashy logo, and then I'll have to make the switch, but by the end of the weekend it should be ready for rollout. Until then, please excuse any technical difficulties.

Chris Hill Festival
No more ugly yellow-green,
bad grammar endures

There is a power line that runs right alongside our apartment building and specifically right above my window. It has always mildly concerned me, but apparently during the snowstorm something happened to it. Now there is a dangling exposed power line literally right outside my window. The end of it has some frayed tape so I can't see whether it was the wire that fell or just the insulation, but you know what they say about kids who grow up under the power lines...

As Jim pointed out, one of the highlights of the weblog party was Star Wars Super Bombad Racing, a Mariokart-type game featuring Episode I characters with large heads. I was in charge of video game rental, but none of our first choices were available at Delmar Blockbuster ("The Stealingest Blockbuster in the Nation", seriously), so I was forced to choose between Britney's Dance Groove, every sports game imaginable, various Xtreme sports interpretations named after soul-patched twentysomethings who are apparently famous to some people, and RPGs. This was one of the only games that looked like multiple people could play at the same time against each other and not have to undergo a steep learning curve. Unfortunately, nowhere on the box did it point out that the graphics were horrible and the game was badly programmed. At one point I spent about 5 minutes trying to extricate my vehicle from a fountain while all the other racers had finished long ago. At least when each race was over we got to see the winning character engage in a personalized dance groove or other such move (Yoda just nodded his head). Good times.

I went 10-6 in NFL picks last week, jumping to 112-81. Lucas went 12-4, defeating me once again, to move to 126-67. The margin is growing again.

IND at TEN: IND. The Titans are banged up and overrated, start losing already!

STL at KC: KC. This pick has more to do with the Rams' general crappiness than it has to do with the Chief's 49-0 stomping of the Cardinals last week.

BUF at NE: NE. Another chance to watch Bledsoe get outcoached. I'm enjoying it much more from the other side.

SF at DAL: SF. Remember when these used to be good games that determined who would go to the Super Bowl from the NFC? Now it's just another opportunity for Terrell Owens to embarass himself.

HOU at PIT: PIT. Tommy Maddox was unconscious for a few hours after a big hit in a game 3 weeks ago, now he's already back on the field. He makes Terry Glenn look like even more of a pussy.

ATL at TB: TB. After living in Atlanta for 9 years of my life, I still stubbornly refuse to believe they have a good team.

NYG at WAS: WAS. I literally flipped a coin to decide which of these crappy teams I would pick. Steve Spurrier.

CIN at CAR: CAR. I almost picked the Bengals, but Carolina did so well without any offense last week that they should theoretically do well against the pushovers in Cincy.

CLE at JAX: JAX. These meaningless games are really hard to pick. The Browns have some injuries so I think the experienced Jags will take care of them.

NO at BAL: BAL. One week they lose to a bad team, the next week they beat Tampa Bay. Their stars are half-injured, but still playing. It doesn't look good for the Saints, especially since ex-QB Jeff Blake has something to prove.

DET at AZ: DET. Good God, NFL, how do you schedule games like this?

PHI at SEA: PHI. Philly could put me in at quarterback (and may need to at this rate) and still beat the Seahawks' defense.

OAK at SD: OAK. I'm still waiting for the Raiders' December swoon, but the Chargers just aren't this good and it's about time their record showed it.

DEN at NYJ: DEN. The AFC west has outclassed the east all season, and things won't change now.

MIN at GB: GB. The Vikes inexplicably beat the Packers in Minnesota a few weeks ago, but now they have to play in the nightmare that is Green Bay in December.

CHI at MIA: MIA. Dolphins December collapse or not, the Bears suck.

Two things I've been pondering recently:

Why does the WashU bookstore's greeting card section have Christmas cards for "Sister and her Husband" and "Grandson" but no other family members? Are these the two most common relations that students have?

Why does the gas company have to send me a brochure with the following message: "Gas pipes have a job of their own to do and shouldn't be used for anything else -- certainly not clotheslines, free-form closets or grounds for electrical appliances"? Do people really use flammable gas pipes to ground appliances? Who are these people?

My arch-nemeses, in no particular order:

-The National Forests/Clean Air Hippie
-Ice and snow
-Microsoft Visio
-The Databases individual project
-House Centipedes
-Sex and the City
-The city of St. Louis, "the stealing-est city in America"
-Baseball commissioner Bud Selig
-Avril Lavigne

Quoth pint-sized rapper "Li'l Romeo" in an interview on the TV Guide channel:

On the topic of 3 of the 4 songs they mentioned:
"That's just a song about me."

On the topic of the 4th song:
"It's a song called 'Girlfriend Boyfriend'. That's a song about the kind of girls I like."

There you go folks. Penetrate the psychological wall that is the mind of the twelve year old rapper by purchasing his new album "Gametime", and who knows ladies, you may be the lucky preteen he's singing about.

I know that most of our readership overlaps, but I'll also plug the weblog party to all you fellow bloggers. Hopefully my sickness will have passed by then.

Speaking of sickness, due to my feverish temperature, headaches, sore throat, and snow on the ground outside, I stayed home from school today. When I was younger, say middle-school age, and got sick, I would watch game shows on TV, read books, and lounge around the house all day. Today, however, I spent 11 hours working on a Databases project. My body may be well-rested from the extra sleep and lack of physical exertion, but my mind is pretty much spent, as evidenced by the fact that all day I had the Foreigner song "Hot Blooded" stuck in my head.

"I'm hot blooded, check it and see. I've got a fever of a hundred and three."

Well I successfully survived two plane flights in the past week, despite the pilot on the second interrupting us constantly inflight with trite comments like "On your left you'll see the Gulf of Mexico, on your right you'll see Orlando". Here's a trite comment for you flyboy: Watch where you're going!

In the Ft. Lauderdale airport there is a sign that says "every time you stop and think, you've missed another opportunity". Comma splice aside, after witnessing such events as the OJ Simpson trial, lawsuits over hot coffee, successful TV shows like The Bachelor and American Idol, and ads on Florida TV for drag racing, I don't ever find myself having the sentiment "You know what, the average American thinks way too much. We should just do whatever comes to mind at the time without the least bit of thought."

Speaking of drag racing, based on the ads the main draws of the event seemed to be a car with a jet engine attached to it and a semi truck with a jet engine attached to it. I don't even like being in planes with jet engines, never mind a big rig.

Today I may have to give a presentation in Databases which thankfully would mark the end of work on the group project that has consumed much of my free time for the past month. However, last night I started coming down with a sore throat and a headache, and as I type this while my research is running my head pounds and my eyes are drooping. It won't be the most averse conditions, since last spring I once gave a CS456 presentation after exactly 30 minutes of sleep the night before, but it will be an interesting challenge nonetheless. At least our project can help me find the cheapest therapeutic equivalent to Dayquil, the only thing that can keep me awake right now.

Despite continuously providing new content over the break, my readership was down to levels I haven't seen in months. Well now I'm insanely busy with schoolwork, so you may have to live with a little less Festival for the next week and a half. Or maybe not, it depends how lazy I am. Anyways, it's good that other people are providing the content for now, that makes my job a lot easier. Here is Joe Tucek's unfortunate admission, which I think beats everyone else's as far as bad music goes:


I consider myself fortunate enough to have sufficient taste in music to avoid any embarassing CDs. Tapes are another story. John Tesh. My only excuse is that I was young, and my only solace is that it's probably only been played twice.


Ouch!