why being pretty ain't all it's cracked up to be

USA Today covered a study looking at happiness of people judged to be the most and least attractive.
So, the difference between the top and bottom ten-to-fifteen percent?

The 15% most beautiful are 10% happier. 5% is in economic benefits, 5% is in the satisfaction of knowing that lots of people want to bone you. (that's not in the study, but that's my best guess)

That's nothing to sneeze at, but it's a bit... small, wouldn't you think? You'd think that all those claims that being pretty means you earn more, or marry more attractive partners, or having people trust you more would all make you happier.

Oh wait. I guess those kinds of things don't actually make you happy.

if you can hit a nail, you can hit a ball

I played racquetball for the first time ever. Racquetball falls under one of those sports which requires a little thing called 'hand-eye coordination'. This is not one of my strong suits. Nor is getting different parts of my body to move in synch. Nor is targeting of small fast-moving targets.

Basically, my strategy is to avoid getting hit, especially in the testicular region. On that regard, I'm 0 for 1.

Why I could not do laundry

I try to be a reasonably clean person, but sometimes it is as though the universe wants me to be more... manly.
Thursday: The internet was down. Without my most favorite past-time, mode of communication and productivity, I had no reason to be awake in the evening. I assumed I could nap and do laundry in the evening. But I was surprised by a surprise party. Not MY surprise party mind you, but a birthday party for some other guy who doesn't live here, but might as well. Okay, the matchup between laundry and partying is truly unfair.

Friday: I had open mic. I also called the police. And was almost run over by a guy on a bike.
Long story short, I saw a guy pull up to an intersection on Sunset with a sun shield on the DRIVER'S window. Walking across the street, I see him brazenly drinking beer from a bottle while driving. Did I call the police? Oh you bet I did. So yeah, sketchy guy driving a mid 90s maroon colored Nissan Sentra license plate 4P-something-something-(I think SV)-423, I know what I saw.
Are you going to fault me for doing my civic duty? Apparently, the universe did. Walking near campus I was chased by and nearly run over by a drunk guy on a bike. I thank my lucky stars that my nickname is “the ivory Kenyan” and not “slow motion McGee”.

Saturday:
I come home after another open mic and there's a film crew in my house. Student film is working and they stay in the house until midnight. “Quiet on the set” means no loud laundry machines. I'm exhausted, and the guy who sleeps closest to the dryers needs sleep too.

So let's recap:
I didn't do my laundry because of a party, a felony, a misdemeanor and cinematography. And two open mics.

The weekend that wouldn't end

Yesterday was Monday. I realized that at about 3pm. I still thought it was Sunday.

To clarify, I did not realize what day came after Sunday.

Rebecca Black, this is all your fault and the fault of your song 'Friday' for not informing me.

No, thank YOU

The website Texts From Last Night posted One of my texts recently.

In other news, I got a postcard from Locks of Love today, thanking me for donating my hair to kids with cancer. I spent a whole year looking like a serial killer, or an anorexic Garth from Waynes World. And all I get in thanks is a postcard?

I want at least a year's worth of hugs from people who didn't want anything to do with me because the choice in hair was not an aesthetically smart decision.

And now, the medical science report

Harvard recently performed the first full-face transplant in the US. The interesting bit is you can apparently become a 'face donor'. Are there limits in place for this? Personally, I think the list for donor faces should be in order of attractiveness.

"We've got a solid 7 ready for you right now, but if you hold out for a couple months, we could bump you up to an 8"

Watching Reality TV makes you a better person

Continuing off of yesterday's post of how to WIN at the SAT Writing section, we have a controversy. According to the Washington Post, A recent essay prompt on Reality TV is causing some to take umbrage. (How's that for SAT vocabulary? See? Being a Comm major didn't make me totally stupid)

Here's the prompt:
“Reality television programs, which feature real people engaged in real activities rather than professional actors performing scripted scenes, are increasingly popular. These shows depict ordinary people competing in everything from singing and dancing to losing weight, or just living their everyday lives. Most people believe that the reality these shows portray is authentic, but they are being misled. How authentic can these shows be when producers design challenges for the participants and then editors alter filmed scenes?

“Do people benefit from forms of entertainment that show so-called reality, or are such forms of entertainment harmful?”


I smell a moral panic. Oh no, there's a form of entertainment out there that's cheesy and mildly degrading to the people on the show. People say that reality TV is not as good as... well, have you seen the TV out there that isn't reality TV? For every Mad Men or Breaking Bad you have Two and a Half Men or Secret Life of the American Teenager or Two and a Half Men; a show so terrible it merits being mentioned twice. Keep in mind that they said similar things about Comic Books, and novels... even the written word was thought to be harmful because it took power away from memory.

The gist of it is that we use these new forms of entertainment for bad purposes, then as time goes on, they can be used for good purposes by people who understand them. The novel? Think of most literature you've been exposed to. Comic books? Watchmen, Maus or Blankets are all examples of great works done in the comic book style. The written word? Well, this blog exists, right? Reality TV is still in its infancy and in the future, it may be used to great ends. But that's not what parents are complaining about.

The complaint is (more or less) "I didn't want my kids exposed to something that is part of the cultural makeup, because I think its harmful; its unfair that the SAT punished my kids for not being aware of it." Let's read the complaint.

"One Montgomery County father, who asked not to be identified because his son would be furious, said his son studies too hard to watch any television. “I’m proud he doesn’t watch television and then he goes into the one test that really counts and he gets pummeled,” he said."

Whoa Whoa Whoa there. First off, I'm a little suspect of someone who won't identify themselves because their child would be furious. What are you doing to this kid? Making him study so hard he doesn't have time to watch TV? That seems excessive. During the High School debate season, I was involved in activities that kept me busy from 7am to 5pm Monday to Saturday, plus all of Friday and Saturday evening. This isn't even including homework or other things I was involved in. And I still was allowed to watch TV.¹

Second, let's look at the bigger issue here. The SAT Essay question isn't about details of the shows - it's about whether certain depictions are harmful. That's an abstract thinking skill, not mere regurgitation of the plot of America's Next Top Model. At the very least, You would think that even the most sheltered high school student has got to be passively aware of what's going on in the world of television, even if you never watch any. If you aren't... honestly that's a bigger problem.

Here's my complaint, coming from a smartass young adult who has zero experience in raising kids. ² If you're raising a kid to be academically minded, they probably won't like reality TV anyways. UNLESS deep down this kid resents being academically minded and instead just wants to do their own thing. I'm not really sure that making a kid into something they don't want to be is in their best interests. Then again, I don't trust myself to raise a puppy let alone a kid.

The takeaway from all of this?
Exposure to reality TV isn't really that harmful. There are no bad tv shows, only bad... wait a second. There is one bad TV show. But the SAT didn't make you write an essay on Two and a Half Men.


1. Why do you think I'm a Comm major now? I had my fill of working my butt off.
2. Something I view as a strength, actually

The Klaused.com Guide to Winning the SAT Writing Section

On the off chance that one of my readers is still in high school, you may face the dreaded SAT writing section. What follows is my handy little guide to the SAT plus Writing.

1) Don't be smart.
They're not looking for deep, cutting insight. They're barely looking for intellect at all. The bar is set at "can you write a five-paragraph essay that doesn't make me want to vomit with rage over how dumb you are?" Pick a viewpoint and defend it as clearly as you can. Stick figures with labels aren't explicitly discouraged.

2) Don't be self-congratulatory.
If you're considering writing something like "as the former secretary-general of the UN said to me when I was receiving my award for excellence in the field of leadership for my role in raising money for Rwanda" don't. Nobody likes a show-off, especially one who won't shut-up. It won't hurt your chances of getting accepted to college, but the College Board will alert your top-choice university and you'll be given a really shitty roommate.

3) Don't be dumb, either.
This means grammar and punctuation. If you know how to use a semicolon; use it. If not - well a dash is almost as good. If you don't know how to use either of those, throw them in anyways, with a good helping of "irrigardless"-es and "ergo"-s. If you're going to bullshit, bullshit to the highest degree possible.

4)Know your goals.
Where are you applying? ASU? Be sure to spill beer on your application. Ivy League? Either write entire sections in Greek or Latin and link them in to post-modern critiques of Foucault, or write a little note about who your daddy is and how he wouldn't stand for this. An Evangelical Christian College? Make sure every sentence is about Jesus. Also, be sure to disclose your below-average ACT science and critical reading scores.

Can you trust me? Absolutely! Keep in mind, I only scored a 520 out of 800 on the writing section. But it's not about scoring well, it's about winning.

I want to take over the world

What's the place on earth nobody wants to claim as theirs? It's not Ohio, it's a little region called Bir Tawil, on the border between Egypt and Sudan. The issue is that it's adjacent to a disputed region called the Hala'ib triangle, which is rich in... minerals and stuff. Thanks to a weird quirk of topography, the group which would own Bir Tawil would also not have a claim to the Hala'ib triangle. So, nobody wants it.

So, I beg of you, Egypt and Sudan; please let me have it. I'll take good care of it. I promise I won't use it as my base of operations for my inevitable supervillainry.

Apparently, the moon and other celestial bodies are also Terra Nullius, places not claimed by any state. I think I'd rather use the moon for my super-villain schemes, but I've got to start somewhere.

Thanks Wikipedia!

What a friend we have in atomic energy

Despite the general feeling that what's going on in Japan is going to kill us, things aren't too bad. A minimal amount of radiation leaked out, but this was after an outdated, 40-year-old design was hit by an earthquake 10 times the maximum strength it should have held, (because the richter scale is log... a 3.0 is ten times weaker than a 4.0, etc) AND was hit by a 20 foot wave. That's pretty solid.

Or you could say 'look at Chernobyl', look how terrible that one was. Well, the Soviets designed something badly. Big shock there. And the thing is it failed under a perfect storm of horrible events happening in juuust the right sequence. That's actually not that bad. That's actually kind of a ringing endorsement, in a bizarre way that feels like something Reagan would have agreed with.

Anyways, I cling to my irrational affinity to atomic energy in the same way that old people will cling to crazy beliefs like "the Soviets are still around", or religion.

Cleaning house

We used to have a problem with ants. It got really bad, too. I'd be eating lunch, and I'd see about fifty ants come up and ask 'you gonna finish that?'

When floating restaurants get ambitious.

According to CNN, patrons of a floating restaurant in Cincinnati had to be rescued when the restaurant broke free from it's moorings.
I wouldn't exactly call this a rescue. They were taken from someplace exciting and placed in a climate that's generally inhospitable, and overwhelmingly dull: Ohio.

You know Stockholm syndrome? It's called that because Stockholm is also boring. It's way less fun than being tied up in a basement.

Finding parking in Silver Lake

I did an open mic for the first time in ages. This meant I had to find a spot to stow my car, and that is not as easy as it sounds.

I turned on this hilly little alley that they consider a street. Two way traffic in theory only. and zero parking to be found. So I kept ascending. Eventually, there's snow and mountain goats, and some penguins. Then some hipster climbers frozen to their fixies.

Dear hipster climbers, when you climb the mountains that nobody else has heard of, nobody rescues you.

Official ruling: MSNBC lies to us edition

Headline: 'Two suns' spotted in China defy explanation

In the article:
The double sun image is an effect of optical refraction

But but... I thought you just said...
MSNBC, You lied to me.

The article goes on to say that we don't know what causes it, and the effect is pretty rare, but you've got the explanation right there. It's not like scientists are scratching their heads going "well, it could be an exploding star, it could be a weather balloon, it could be the return of the demi-god Morthos, it could be global warming... we have no idea what it is"

I'm invoking an official ruling:
If we have a phenomenon which we can attribute to some known effect, even if we don't fully know the cause behind it, it does not "defy explanation".

I hate you, California Pizza Kitchen Salad guy

I am usually a very patient man. But California Pizza Kitchen tries my patience in ways that only slow cashiers and the 110N can.

Here's my problem: it appears that they employ a man whose sole task is to make salads. However, no more than 7 feet to his right is a large display case of salads, ready to go. There's no shortage of salad, no large demand for it. Why?
NOBODY ORDERS SALAD. This man's task is to rearrange leafy greens before they go bad. It would be more efficient to place these salads straight in the trash. He doesn't actually make food; its more for decoration, or guilt-tripping for when you eat fatty foods. This man could be making my pizza, but instead he's wasting his time making sure that each container has exactly one scoop of crumbled feta.

It's sad that I feel more strongly about bbq chicken pizza than local elections.

Beer for hipsters, politics for crazy people

The End of History is a beer that comes in a taxedermied rodent. It's 55% alcohol, and costs 750 dollars per bottle. It's also sold out. That's not what upsets me. This is:

"At BrewDog we want to push the boundaries and challenge people’s perceptions about what beer is and how it can be enjoyed. We ultimately want to show people that there is an alternative to the mainstream, generic beers and make other people as passionate about craft beer as we are."

Why does this always happen? Why does challenging the mainstream run straight into Crazy people Territory? Please, it's possible to have politics that are revolutionary without being grounded in fantasy. Just as it's possible to have beer that's revolutionary and different without being served in dead rodents.

Everything you need to know about the new Lamborghini

To ignore the fact that I'm a poor college student who really needs to pay this month's rent, I like to pretend that I'm a secret millionaire.
And let me tell you, secret millionaire me is PISSED that I can't buy the new Lamborghini Aventador. Even the name is awesome. Aventador is a great word. It makes me think of a matador with a jetpack. It's going on the list of names I would name my kid, if I were Charlie Sheen right now¹.

The car goes from naught-to-sixty in the time it takes you to realize the milk's gone bad. This might be a bit sluggish for the on-ramps on the 110 north of downtown LA, which are best measured in nanometres, but should be more than adequate everywhere else. The engine itself is a v-12 mill that produces 700 horsepower: let's be honest, that number is wholly gratuitous, but Lamborghini has never been known for restraint. Top speed is 217 miles per hour, but it makes more sense to refer to that number as Mach .28.

The transmission is made of robots, the body is aluminium and carbon fibre, and the brakes are carbon ceramic. This car is so advanced that if you crash it (which you almost certainly will) that there is only one man in the United States qualified to repair it, using techniques that make open heart surgery look like it was performed with gardening shears.


Yes, they've mis-spelled the word 'matte'
The car is designed with all the restraint of a weeklong cocaine binge. Colors include TSA threat level Orange, shouty yellow, and bloodshot eyes red. There are also three different colors of grey, in case you're boring. Of course, it's only a matter of time before these cars are painted lurid shades of pink or gold by their owners, and given wheels which belong on Escalades. You can't do anything to save them.

That's the downside: The entire first year's run has been bought up, most likely by loud, flashy individuals who will leave the world no doubt that they're overcompensating. That's the club you'll be buying into. Poor college boy me doesn't want to hang with that crowd. Millionaire me, on the other hand is shedding a single 24 karat gold tear.

1. The list also includes Lando, Magnum, and BAM! (with the exclamation mark)

In which I am a meddling kid

Someone at the house next door has a new boyfriend. How can I tell?

I can hear his snoring from here. Between that, and the damn rooster (which crowed five times during the writing of this sentence alone) that house hates my ability to sleep.
I think the problem is someone needs to reset the rooster. it's still on Eastern time.

I wonder how many brilliant deductions Sherlock Holmes came up with when he was pissed off at the neighbors. (stay tuned for an actual joke that comes from that premise)

I'm an adult now!

I am not very good with computers. It took me the better part of 3 years to set up the email application on my computer... and I have a mac, so it's not as though it's very difficult to do in the first place.

But now, I have it. This means I can finally be tied down to every new email that comes in, preventing me from ever becoming independent from work.

problem solved

The next-door neighbors have a rooster that crows frequently at all hours of night. There are also stray cats in the neighborhood. I feel like there's a good outcome possible.

When service animals are douchebags

This dog is part of a program to help kids read. Apparently, dogs are non judgmental and will help kids be less self-conscious about their reading skills. Oh joy.

riiiiiight.
Look at that dog. That dog isn't withholding judgment: he's made up his mind. He's bored and he wants steak. What a dick. At least fake interest.

Rewarding Drunkenness.

A sort of followup to the dare post.
A recent Texts From Last Night referenced this, saying "I'm still not walking right. We need some boundaries for "drink-or-dare"..."

I feel like I win at college.