So as I alluded to on the left, our epic IM softball showdown last week resulted in a rain-drenched tie. Even after playing one "extra-inning" in a deluge of water that rendered the field a muddy bog with huge puddles everywhere, the IM Championship was undecided.

Tonight the titans clash again in what will hopefully decide whose team reigns supreme. 9:00 at the IM field on Forsyth. And if last week was any indication, they will make us play the game regardless of the weather.

This morning I attempted to pull out of our parking lot, but only got as far as the alley next to our building before I was stopped by a very raggedy, beat-up car with duct tape holding the driver's door on. I looked around for the driver, and noticed a disheveld man walking towards me. "Ah," I thought, "Someone else needs bus money or gas money or prescription medicine money."

But then I had a flash of deja vu. I had seen this particular beggar before, and as soon as he opened his mouth (his car was blocking the road so I couldn't drive away) claiming that his wife had "run the car out of gas" and that he "only has 12 cents on him" and asking if he could "have some money to buy gas" I knew from where. He had given me the same song and dance at the hotel where my Dad was staying when he came here during spring break...a hotel by the airport.

Not only does this guy get gas money, he gets enough of it to really expand his territory. He wasn't about to get any from me, though, not using the same story like that. Show some variety, and maybe I'll open my wallet. Give me a little Nigerian Scam action maybe, offer me $3.5 million if I agree to give him my bank account number.

Or at least make up a story that doesn't involve a wife who is clearly not present.

If you've noticed, there haven't been many weblog posts by anyone in the community this weekend. Some may attribute that to end-of-the-semester workloads or a decline in the popularity of weblogs in general, but I know better. The slow period was because everyone's eyes were off the internet and glued to ESPN's round-the-clock broadcast of the NFL Draft.

Some ESPN pundits call the draft the "second biggest weekend of the season" (the first, of course, being the Super Bowl). I would be inclined to agree, as nothing in sports gets me more jacked up than hearing those magical words, "With the 181st pick in the draft, the Tampa Bay Buccanneers select Nate Lawrie from Yale University", and then watching 15 minutes of hastily-spliced-together montage footage of the player playing college, high school, and Pop Warner football while random people praise him for his "upside", "intangibles", and "character" as we all wait breathlessly for pick number 182.

But in case you happened to miss this year's NFL draft and (god willing) last week's televised WNBA draft, never fear, for we're only a month or two away from the NBA draft. How many first rounders will have names you can't pronounce? How many will have suits that actually look stylish or at least fit them? How many draftees are young enough to be your son? Stay tuned to ESPN for all-day coverage, followed by weeks of analysis.

Dodgers-Giants. Cubs-Cardinals. Yankees-Red Sox. Tonight WashU's biggest softball rivalry returns to the IM field as the gritty CS Department team squares off against their arch-nemeses, the ultra-fratty Beta team. The game is on for tonight despite the weather, so come watch us try to get revenge on our arch rivals at the softball field on Forsyth at 9 PM. Bring it.

Spurred on by the recent release of Blender Magazine's Worst 50 Songs of All Time (#1 is We Built This City), conversation in our lab sprung up about what really is the worst song of all time. On this site I've discussed my dislike for a lot of bad popular songs like Sk8r Boi or, more recently, Fortune Faded, but these are way too new to be the "worst of all time".

Dave Barry offers a few suggestions in his Book of Bad Songs, which I highly recommend, but he focuses more on bad lyrics than bad overall musical experience. Some he mentions are Macarthur Park, a 7 and a half minute long song that features a man screaming in agony over a cake that melts in the rain, and a song I've never heard called Timmy in My Tummy, which seems to have no information on the internet but according to Dave Barry contains the line "I've got Timmy in my tummy".

Does anyone else have some good nominees (and no, you're not allowed to use my songs, it has to be an actual musician who wrote or performed a real song)?

For another funny read, this site attempts to rank the worst album covers of all time. Good stuff.

EDIT: Even more great album covers are here. Don't let your parents talk about the "good old days" of music ever again...

michael gets some major dap, as Wilbon would say, for squeezing an extra month in Apartment 12 out of the folks at the Reserve. Instead of moving twice in a span of 3 weeks, I only have to move once after graduation when I make my pilgrimage to Kansas City.

The semester is winding down, and I only have 3 more days of lecture, 2 more assignments, and 1 more exam in my college career. It is kind of refreshing not having to do the whole course sign-up thing again, although what a long, strange trip it has been. It certainly doesn't seem like 6 years have gone by.

Last week, sales for my debut EP doubled, and I expect the same performance this week. Order yours now while supplies last.

This weekend, as all of us WashUers are well aware due to the lack of parking, was Thurtene Carnival, organize by WashU's most elite and honorable society of blah blah blah. But all Thurtene-bashing aside, the carnival is a great event if only because it's one of the few times when we as a school provide something for the general community besides late-night noise violations and a reason for Schnucks to be open at 3 AM. Unfortunately, WashU's favorite alumni reporter Ben Westhoff doesn't think so. Why does Ben's job for the Riverfront Times consist solely of writing articles about WashU? Isn't this kind of a conflict of interest, especially when he starts interviewing friends and ex-girlfriends like did in the Famous Direct Connect Expose?

Anyway, this morning as I walked to the gym, this years fraternity pledge classes were busy taking their their elaborately rickety facades, some of which looked cool but others that looked like a strong win or direct sunlight would reduce them to a pile of duct tape and plywood.

At the same time, the strip of grass and sidewalk between frat row and the tennis courts was littered with empty beer cans from the weekend of senseless drinking (despite the fact that there was a garbage can approximately every three feet along the row). The most disgusting part, though, was the group of 2 or 3 Theta Xi "brothers" who were lounging at a picnic table completely covered with empty cans and bottles watching like spoiled brats while Top Care workers picked up the cans and trash on their lawn.

If fraternities want to live in their own filth, which -- judging by the condition of the row whenever I walk by -- they clearly do, they should be allowed to do so. Why should the employees paid for out of other students' tuition dollars spend time time every weekend cleaning up pile after pile of beer cans from [insert inappropriate theme here] frat party? If I were them, I would pick up the cans, bring them inside, and dump them all on the floor or in the hallways of the frat houses. Perhaps then the "brothers" would summon up the ability to get their garbage in the trash cans (or, more likely, make their pledges clean up after them).

Homer: [scribbling furiously] "Garbage in garbage cans. Hmm...makes sense."

A few weeks ago I went to a notable Vietnamese restaurant in town and got the following in my fortune cookie:

The color red will be important to you.

I don't think they're really trying anymore.

As you can see, the softball team won easily again this week 11-1, setting us up for a championship game clash against either our arch-nemeses the fratty Beta team or some team called Hardball. I am, of course, rooting for Beta to win so that we have a Yankees-Red Sox-esque rematch with them and a chance to avenge our loss last year. The game will be at 9:00 PM on the IM field on Forsyth this coming Thursday.

And finally, we have an early nominee for worst lyrics of the year. The song Fortune Faded by the Red Hot Chili Peppers most likely contains (lyrics sites were split over the actual words) the following gem:

They say in chess you've got to kill the queen and then you mate it
Oh I, do you?
A funny thing, the king who gets himself assassinated
Hey now, every time I lose
Attitude

As much as I care about lead singer Anthony Kiedis' proficiency at chess, this is just terrible.

Parking today on campus reminded me of the Simpsons episode where Homer parks at the far end of the lot for the Nuclear Plant, which turns out to be right next to his house. Thanks a lot Thurtene, WashU's "most esteemed group on campus" [gag].

Lucas' recent post about the Atkins diet reminds me of something I saw on TV a few weeks ago. While waiting for my tires to get rotated at 8:30 AM, I was watching Good Morning America in the waiting room, and they had a "dietary expert" who had just written a new book about dieting, which of course he was hawking to anyone and everyone. During his "interview" (I hate to insult real journalists by calling it that), they flashed up some trivia questions about dieting, which included the following:

Which of the following diets will allow you to lose the most weight in one year:

A) Low-Carb
B) Low-Calorie
C) Both are the same


The answer, of course, is C, and it should have been qualified with a "neither if you don't get any exercise". People are very good about making the "easy" decisions regarding weight loss: eat the item that says it's healthy on the menu, go with salads instead of french fries, etc. But they like to forget that salad is just as bad for you if you put dressing on it and the worst thing you can possibly have with a meal is a soda (or a "Coke" as I like to call it).

People also lose all sense of rationality when confronted with false hopes. If you told someone on the street that you had a pill that could make them gain 30 pounds in 2 weeks they would call you a liar, but I get spam emails all the time advertising pills that promise to cut 30 pounds in 2 weeks, and if they exist then some idiot must be buying them.

In addition to Hardees' Breakfast Bucket that Lucas mentioned, here are some other ridiculous low-carb foods:

-Thomas' Carb Counting Bagels: a bagel, being comprised entirely of bread, is by default ALL carbohydrates. A low-carb bagel is, in fact, 40 percent smaller than the normal-carb bagel. Interesting.

-Pepsi Edge: Pepsi with 50 percent less sugar and carbohydrates and presumably 50 percent more strange chemicals that will be shown to cause cancer in 30 years.

-Any kind of low-carb beer: the way alcohol is metabolized, you're still going to get the unsightly beer gut.

-Low-carb PowerBars: a product intentionally high in carbs and fat for people with an active lifestyle. Why would these people cut carbs?

Here's a typical person who gets brainwashed by the Low-carb media frenzy and ignores common sense: "Tom McMurray, a North Carolina lawyer, used to eat Krispy Kreme doughnuts, Burger King hamburgers and Hershey's chocolate Kisses. He says he's lost 50 pounds in the past year by cutting carbohydrates."

Was it the fewer carbs that lost him the weight, or was it the fact that he's no longer eating doughnuts (high in calories), hamburgers (high in fat) and candy (high in calories and fat)? The CEO of Kelloggs says it best:

"Ultimately it is how many calories you consume and how many calories you exercise away."

I've had a request for a softball update from Ron, so here it goes. We won our game the other night 8-7 as you can see. We were losing through almost the whole game due to our sloppy fielding, while the Encouncil team we played against was much better in the field. Plus our team has started to get complacent, and most of our players showed up 5 minutes before the game and didn't warm up.

But we managed to pull it out in the last (4th) inning. We were the home team so as soon as we pulled ahead the game was over and we emerged victorious. I don't know anything about the team we play next week, but I'm sure they will be even better than this team, so we'll have to be ready if we want to make it to the championship game.

Actually, my complaint this week is not with Student Life, but with the Professor and Chair of the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures here at WashU. Lost in the sea of people complaining about the Ervin Scholarship becoming "integrated" (I'm sorry people, but if one minority group gets their own scholarship, then every possible minority group should get their own scholarship. Better to award money to the most deserving regardless of race.), was a letter from said Professor and Chair Elzbieta Sklodowska entitled "Murder is Not Funny". A true sentiment indeed. Here's the full text of her letter:

One might be inclined to ignore the general lack of taste and wit displayed in the recent issue of "Student Libel" as so much adolescent graffiti. Murder, however, is no joking matter, especially in a city where homicide rates have frequently been much higher than the national average --which is never an acceptable figure to begin with. Perhaps the editors ought to bear in mind their responsibilities as citizens of a larger community beyond the campus.


Very true, we do live in a crime-ridden cesspool, but the "murder" referred to in the letter (the full article can be read here), was, in fact, the death of a FREAKING RABBIT STATUE. Therefore, the concept of murder, when applied to a nonliving heap of metal considered absurd or whimsical depending on who you ask, is a "joking matter" (whether or not the story itself was amusing is another post entirely).

But don't worry, by next week idiot letters like this will be replaced by even dumber letters where frat boys try to justify their outlandish spending on temporary Thurtene Carnival facades (leaving no money to donate to charity) as "all about brotherhood and community".

As my college career winds down, I find myself playing sports almost every day. Tuesday I played basketball, Wednesday I played my first match in the CS Department Tennis Tournament, tonight is a softball game, Friday I have another tennis match, and then Saturday I'm playing in two tennis matches. Eileen compares my schedule to summer camp, and I'd tend to agree, although our apartment is slightly more comfortable than a cabin (albeit with the same number of fieldmice).

Now that it's past midnight EDT, I can officially unveil my acoustic EP. Unfortunately, although I tried to find a week that was devoid of any other musical releases to steal my thunder, I am sharing the spotlight with William Hung. But the good news is it means I'm not the worst singer to release a CD today.

If you want a copy, you can buy it using Paypal for only 3 dollars. The 3 bucks pays for the blank CD, the case, and the artwork, but it didn't feel right charging for bad music. The profits (if I break even, which I won't), will be split between lyricist Bryan Schiffner and I as per our contract. I'll even mail it to you for free unless you live in St. Louis, in which case you can pick it up from my office or something.

This weekend I:

-Played 4-square in the grass using sticks as boundaries in Forest Park.

-Went back to the same glass factory I was at last week with the scholarship kids, this time for an architecture formal, to celebrate me and Eileen's 1 year anniversary.

-Got thrown way off-kilter by the time change.

-Watched the start of the 2004 baseball season start the same way the 2003 season ended: with a Red Sox loss.

-Completed production on my acoustic EP, stay tuned for details...

The results are still pending, but as of right now I only know of three websites that ran April Fools Day-related pranks. Our own Smackie the Frog claimed to be quitting the weblog business; Google offered positions at a new lunar facility (opening in 2007) which would have to deal with the strange effects of low gravity on code, such as "values incrementing 6 times faster than in Earth gravity"; and Homestar Runner put up a fake "under construction" page that featured an amusing duel between Anime-Strong Bad and the Under Construction Stickman. Were there any other sites you visited that tried to fool the world? If so, leave a comment and let us all in on the joke.

In other more non-disappointing news, as you can see from the schedule on the left we won our softball game last night 24-2. Next week we play a team of Encouncil members, which should be interesting.