No Soap Radio

Dear Mrs. Nathan's Mom

2008-05-28T15:09:00.004-04:00

Dear Mrs. Nathan's Mom,

I have to start by thanking you for posting a comment on my blog. I've been a little out of practice with this thing, and haven't posted in it since March. Your comment reminded me this blog existed, and I'll be updating it more regularly in the future.

I notice in your comment that you don't offer any arguments for the safety of giving a blind kid a gun; you actually create a pretty decent argument for your son to never, ever be handed a loaded firearm. First, let's clear up a few things.

1) Your son does not have super-sensitive hearing: This is a myth. Your son pays more attention to his hearing no doubt, since his vision isn't up to par, but his ears operate exactly like yours and everyone else's.

And what's your real argument there? That your son can hear where a deer is accurately enough to tag its kill zone from 100 yards away? He might enjoy reading the Braille version of Daredevil comics, but those human echolocation powers are still fictional, ma'am. Although, I have to admit I would read a comic called "Daredevil: The Man Without Fear (of Innocent Bystanders)."

(By the way, your son scoring well on his hunter safety written test doesn't really have anything to do with his vision, does it? I've taken that course as well.)

2) Legally blind is still blind: For the purposes of this conversation, anyway. The American definition of legally blind is at least 20/200 vision in the best eye with the best correction. That literally means the deer I can pick out at 200 feet would have to be six strides from your son before it was that visible. In case you've never been hunting, deer don't get that close.

Your son isn't allowed to drive a car. He can't read his rifle's safety manual. Why should he operate a firearm? How can he possibly safely do so? And I'm guessing his gangbanging career is just shot, so to speak.

3) Your blind son is not a sharpshooter: I used to live near Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, which houses one of the two sniper schools used by the Marine Corps. Let's say the military ignored its rule about not accepting the legally blind (something to do with them not being able to safely operate firearms, grenades, artillery, Humvees, maps, etc.) and let him go toe-to-toe with actual sharpshooters. His legally nonexistent oculars are going to serve him better than the 20/20+ military-trained eyes of actual snipers?

At what point did you slip into the delusion that your son is a superhero? I'll tell you what, the day your son fights off a group of burglars or saves an infant from the burning building that not even firefighters can get to--firefighters with properly operating eyeballs mind you--then I will personally buy him a rifle. No bullets, though. I figure by the time he navigates his way to the store I can get myself safely out of range, out of state, or do whatever I need to do to get away from a walking definition of the phrase "firing blind."

Mrs. Nathan's Mom, if you're going to go around Googling your son's name and reading random blogs then you've got to expect to find some that disagree with you. You've also got to expect some of those people to be assholes about it. (If you didn't expect that, then I'd like to formally welcome you to the Internet. Wikipedia is useful, and Yahoo Mail is the best.) I considered post-scripting the above with a list of things that I was better at than your son (e.g. dodgeball, darts, reading, checking the expiration date on milk, etc.) but they all seemed pretty obvious. Obvious to everyone but you, of course.

And finally, just so you know, finding things I don't like and then writing about them is actually my chosen career, so this attitude has already and will continue to take me far. I don't really foresee myself taking a hard fall. Mostly because I can see where all my furniture is.

Cheers,
Luke

Failure to Communicate: Re-elections can't come early enough for SGA

2008-03-25T15:05:00.002-04:00

As a preface, here's this week's front page story from The Carolinian.

In February of 2007 when the UNCG Student Government Association was placed on probation, it was because the SGA failed to give the university 12 hours notice before holding an event on campus. It was a small rule broken, essentially a technicality.

In March of 2008 our SGA was placed on probation again, for what we again can essentially call a technicality. The SGA recently lost its affiliation with the university for about a week and a half when SGA President John Bryant was supposed to submit some paperwork, but apparently did not. Its current probationary status is the result of Bryant's error.

These errors might seem small when taken at face value, but they reflect a huge failure of our SGA to fulfill one of its major purposes. To many students, SGA is known mostly as the governing body they have to deal with in order for their student group to gain and maintain affiliation with the university or receive any of the funds allotted to student groups. Without filling out the correct forms and taking the technical, SGA-approved steps toward affiliation, you're not getting a dime.

I know plenty of people who have failed at this task, frustrated, because they simply forgot a form or turned something in too late. But them's the breaks. You don't go through the motions, you don't get your moolah.

So, the mere fact that these violations happened in the governing body charged with deciding if all other student groups can receive or maintain affiliation with the university begs the question, why are people who can't follow the rules in charge of enforcing the rules?

Full column

La Oficina

2008-02-08T16:33:00.000-05:00

Variety -- BBC Worldwide Americas has licensed "The Office" for a local remake in Chile.

It's the first format deal in Latin America for Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant's comedy and the first Spanish-language version.

"We stopped making 'The Office' in 2003, but the rest of the world didn't," Gervais said. "I won't be happy until I see an Inuit doing the dance."

Yet another point for me to turn to when arguing that The Office is the best television show that has ever existed. The Chilean version will be the sixth version of the show, the others hailing from France, America, Germany, French Canada, and the original U.K. show.

This reminded me of the surprising amount of Smurfs exposure there has been in the world, a fact NPR educated me on earlier this week. The show has been put in so many other countries that it has basically been translated into more languages than it hasn't. Not bad for a communist conspiracy.

Full Variety article

Word, son

2008-02-07T11:32:00.000-05:00

An english professor played this for us in class once. I'm gonna miss the English department at UNCG.

Rock on with your historic self

2008-01-20T00:46:00.000-05:00

For various reasons, I've spent the past couple days looking through remixes of MLK's "I Have a Dream Speech." And, for various reasons, I've decided this is the best one I've seen.

Financial lemming

2008-01-16T13:10:00.000-05:00

Someone I know asked me a while back what I would do if money wasn't a factor, the famous Office Space question. The fact that I'd still write tells me I'm in the right career track, but I would probably get rid of the things I don't like, such as getting up early, doing work I don't want to do, and wearing pants. I'd probably just blog.

When I heard of Smorty, a site that basically pays to advertise on blogs by paying you for blogging whatever opinion you have on topics they come up with, I figured it was B.S. Then a couple of my friends gave it a shot, and Joe said he made 50 bucks in a week, and I decided it was time to go with the crowd.

Obviously I wouldn't be doing this if the site tried to control what I write in any way. Get paid to blog, write what I want, doesn't seem like a bad deal. The only catch is I can't label which post is from Smorty. So, fair warning, some of the unbiased entries to follow may or may not be making me small amounts of money.

Romney wins!!!!11!11!666!!!!

2008-01-16T00:34:00.000-05:00

Did the people of Michigan vote for the most evil looking person, or do republicans just look evil when they're happy? Maybe Michiganders love Mormons.

Yes, the correct term is Michigander.

Now that I'm not six, Full House gets more and more creepy

2008-01-15T22:26:00.000-05:00

So everyone remembers Steve, the guy that DJ dated for a long time. We're all together in this 90s nostalgia?

Well, that guy's name is Steve Weinger. In addition to playing Steve in Full House, he played in an episode of Scrubs, was the voice of Disney's Aladdin, and by the way, played DJ's cousin in a much, much earlier episode.

I guess it technically isn't as creepy as the season seven episode where Stavros, Jesse's cousin, makes a pass at Becky, but really. He was their cousin and DJ's boyfriend. That's just lazy casting.

Cultural differences in today's BBC

2008-01-14T20:11:00.000-05:00

Our concerns in America - http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/7183957.stm

Concerns in Iran - http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7188121.stm

And, of course, Americans have a false opinion of Iran.

Attention white people, I have an annoucement

2007-12-13T01:19:00.000-05:00

"S. Robert Lichter and Daniel R Amundsen undertook the time-consuming task of content analyzing television news stories from 1972 to 1992. They found that stories about Congress and policy matters fell nearly 20% while stories about Congress and scandals increased 400%.

... Television, with its fixation on stories of sensational wrongdoing, with its ability to incite visceral reactions from viewers, and with widespread public reliance on it for news and information, is in all likelihood the most dangerous medium in the minds of those who worry about public perceptions of our political institutions." - Hibbing and Theiss-Morse, "The Media's Role in Public Negativity" (emphasis mine)

Television news rots your brain. News stories, like election ballots, are better when they're put on paper.

Also, Jesus was black, Ronald Reagan was the devil, and the government is lying about 9/11.

Eat it, bitches.

Whoa, I wrote something

2007-12-06T18:12:00.000-05:00

The Carolinian -- I remember figuring out there was no Santa Claus in the second grade. Maybe it was sooner, maybe I held out hope past that, but the real moment of realization came during our second grade Christmas pageant.

During our school's pageant, a term I'm using from memory rather than accuracy, every teacher, school official, and parent was present in our school's gymnasium/cafeteria/theater. When we returned to our classrooms, a small gift waited on each student's desk. Santa had brought us the present while we all sang, they said. Outside of the tall old people in that gym, I knew of no other adults. It made sense to my first grade mind.

The next year I knew the routine and scanned the crowd for any missing or, potentially, bearded faces. Wasn't long before I noticed our school's janitor was the only person not in the gym. He, with his armload of keys, was the only person with access to every room. That explanation made sense too. It was somewhere in the course of this particular day that I applied this reasoning to the actual Santa Claus theory, and it clicked. Our teachers and parents had lied to us. (Full column here)

This is the sixth piece I've written for the paper this semester, making this my least prolific five months in the past three years. (It's also too long and unrevised, but that'll happen when you pen something at 3 a.m. to fill space.) I'll have to figure out some better sort of schedule next semester.

Told you so

2007-11-19T14:22:00.001-05:00

Permanent writer seeks temporary inspiration

2007-11-14T22:26:00.000-05:00

I’m surrounded with the false symptoms of needing a job.

Our apartment’s continuously messy kitchen is packed with food. In the fridge are three jugs of milk and four cartons of eggs. At one point our cupboard had six jars of peanut butter. This apartment has five people who enjoy having their own things (where the sixth jar came from we still aren’t sure).

If you broke the kitchen up by food ownership, the section labeled “Luke” would be pretty sparse, the highlights being some bread, tuna, eggs (of course), a box of Frosted Flakes I don’t plan on eating, and a couple Red Bulls. This short grocery list isn’t a financial decision on my part, though. Like the woman from Lethal Weapon 2, I really prefer to pick my meals on a day-to-day basis—the hunt for a sudden craving is much more fun than the stability of having your meals planned for a week. I shopped and cooked all summer while living at my friend Jamie’s place; it’s time for a little spontaneity.

The walls of my room are also rather bare. I’ve never had the touch for interior decorating, I’ll admit, but you can’t build a muscle you don’t exercise. The white wall look comes from the theory that a bedroom is a simple place to walk into and collapse after you’ve the things filling your waking hours. It can also be a place to lock out everything while reading and writing, which usually dominates my schedule, but distractions aren’t useful in this instance either. I have paintings my friends and I have done, but they’re sitting on the floor. There are some posters I could put up and some art prints I have my eye on, but who has the time? I’ve got a desk piled with notepads and newspapers, a two-level bookshelf I’m pretty happy with, and a soft bed. A bedroom needs no more.

Then there’s my car. It’s small, and while it occasionally provides the opportunity for a lesson in car maintenance, I love that thing. I love it because small cars are more fun to drive, a fact I learned while being whipped around town in my friend Will’s identical-looking Toyota back in high school. That, and the mileage on that beast lets me take random trips to Raleigh or Jacksonville or anywhere I suddenly find it necessary to be. (I suppose it’s partially a financial thing then.)

All of these seem like reasons for wanting a job, but my real motivation for seeking employment—in addition to the gig I’ve already got—lies, as always, in something I read.

I just finished A Softer World writer Joey Comeau’s short story “Halt”, which is the tale of his short-lived employment as a security guard (he was eventually fired after being falsely accused of peeing in a bucket and leaving it in someone’s office). I’ve always enjoyed anything Comeau writes, and a lot of his work has to do with his lack of…work.

A writer working a shit job, just like a writer doing anything, is really only different than any other person doing the same in that the writer makes a story out it. By that I don’t necessarily mean they go home afterward and punch away on a keyboard, though that’s an important part. The typing comes later, but the story begins the second you begin to see it as one.

What I see here is an opportunity. The only thing I like more than having money to blow on the people who make me smile—drinks at the bar, picking up that book they were looking for, gas money to visit far flung friends, the only things worth spending frivolously on really—is having a good story to tell them. I’ve had a lot of jobs, most of them in restaurants or, more recently, newsrooms, and any that didn’t involve writing I quickly began to hate.

I need something different. The want ads are story leads. It’ll be something exciting, at least potentially. Something challenging, if only for my patience. Something so full of room for me to dream that it can’t help but let me down. This isn’t a resume builder; it’s an experiment. It’s not a career path; it’s a premise.

Here’s to getting paid to be a writer, no matter what the job title.

This is what it's like when dork-worlds collide

2007-11-12T14:02:00.001-05:00

Did I expect I Can Has Cheezburger? to combine my logophilia with my love of captioned cat pictures? No, but you never know what to expect from the Intertrons.

That made my day, until I discovered Word Spy, a website "devoted to lexpionage, the sleuthing of new words and phrases." This is an endeavor that I'm already a huge supporter of, so I'm very literally wide-eyed and drop-jawed, staring at words like:

lifestreaming n. An online record of a person's daily activities, either via direct video feed or via aggregating the person's online content such as blog posts, social network updates, and online photos.

sharp number n. A precise or unrounded number.

upcycling n. A process that takes used or recycled materials and creates a new product with a higher quality or value than the original materials.

glamping n. A form of camping that includes expensive equipment, fine food, and other luxuries.

Oh, I will be here for hours.

John Clarke + Spanish Guitar = Happy Ears

2007-11-09T15:34:00.000-05:00

http://www.youtube.com/user/johnclarkemusic

Everything this guy does is insane. If you're at all a fan of spanish guitar, enjoy. You're welcome.

I've really got to start paying attention

2007-11-02T11:20:00.000-04:00

NY Post -- You could barely see him - and that was the problem.

The latest streaker to traverse the Crossroads of the World had New Yorkers and tourists gaping at around 9:30 p.m. last night as he made a mad dash from the Times Square subway station at West 42nd Street.

I was walking through Time Square last night at roughly the time that happened. Didn't see it. I also missed Alec Baldwin walked by us on the street. I knew I should have refilled that ADHD prescription before I left.

Maybe they'll make this blog change its name too

2007-10-22T00:06:00.000-04:00

"Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut." - Ernest Hemingway

I found a blog called "one true sentence" about all things Hemingway. It's interesting, but not as interesting as the FAQ located elsewhere on the site that answers a question about Hemingway's alcoholism with the following:

It has been reported that during the last twenty years of his life, Hemingway got himself into the habit of consuming a quart of whiskey a day. To many, such drinking behavior would indicate alcoholism. Hemingway did like to drink and was blessed with the ability to drink great amounts without showing the effects (don't know if this is a blessing, to some I imagine it is). Towards the end of his life when his health began to deteriorate and his doctors told him to lay off the bottle, he did, but only temporarily. Whenever he felt the urge, he would pick up the practice again. It wasn't the alcohol though that killed Hemingway in the end. It was a shotgun blast to the head. Hemingway was passionate about so many things in his life, alcohol just happened to be one of them. He carried this passion with him wherever he went. Alcohol truly was his moveable feast.

He drank a quart of whiskey a day, drank against doctors' warnings "whenever he felt the urge," and eventually ended it all by suck-starting a 12-gauge. That paragraph has to be the only time I've ever seen anyone defend Hemingway's drinking. This really is a fan site.

New Farewell music video

2007-10-21T22:43:00.000-04:00

Greensboro band Farewell has a new video out:

Can you still call them a Greensboro band once they're touring nationally? They were when I interviewed them, but a lot changes in four months. I'm going to say yes, since it makes Greensboro cooler by proxy.

A school of Big Tunas

2007-10-21T21:02:00.000-04:00

Everybody knows that Jim from The Office is nicknamed "Big Tuna" by Andy. Everybody does know that, right?

I was surprised when I heard during the Steelers game tonight that it's also the nickname of NFL coach Bill Parcells.

Andy calls Jim that because Jim ate a tuna sandwich on his first day of work with Andy. Andy is not the brightest cat.

Parcells says he's called the "Big Tuna" because he once responded to a question with something resembling, "Who do you think I am? Charlie the Tuna?" Sports nicknames are also rarely based on some intelligent reason, mostly because people like John Madden come up with them. The "Big" part came in either from Parcells' size or his impact on the game (five current NFL coaches were once his assistant coach). Anyone who can retire three times from the same game has to have a Jordan-like impact on it.

Big Tuna is also an Israeli-made mockumentary from 2004. The largest Blue Fin Tuna ever caught was 1,496 pounds, caught off Nova Scotia in 1979.

Cutest infestation ever

2007-10-21T15:35:00.000-04:00

Mitch, you stand corrected:

NEW YORK - Ladybugs, 720,000 of them, have been released in the middle of New York City to help protect one of the city's biggest apartment complexes from pests.

In the next days and weeks, they will crawl into plants, flowers and shrubs in the Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village complex in search of insects whose smell attracts them - soft-bodied, leaf-sucking aphids and mites.

Buying the bugs - at US$16.50 for 2,000 - means the complex's owner, Tishman Speyer, can avoid using chemical insecticides.

THAT is the cutest infestation ever.

Ain't that a shame

2007-10-18T18:42:00.000-04:00

PHILADELPHIA — The city has decided that the Boy Scouts chapter here must pay fair-market rent of $200,000 a year for its city-owned headquarters because it refuses to permit gay Scouts.

The organization's Cradle of Liberty Council, which currently pays $1 a year in rent, must pay the increased amount to remain in its downtown building past May 31, Fairmount Park Commission president Robert N.C. Nix said Wednesday.

City officials say they cannot legally rent taxpayer-owned property for a nominal sum to a private organization that discriminates. The city owns the land on which the council's 1928 Beaux Arts building sits.

Scouting officials will ask the city solicitor for details on the appraisals that yielded the $200,000 figure, said Jeff Jubelirer, spokesman for the Cradle of Liberty Council.

The higher rent money "would have to come from programs. That's 30 new Cub Scout packs, or 800 needy kids going to our summer camp," Jubelirer said. "It's disappointing, and it's certainly a threat." Full article

I can't stop laughing about this one, really. I can't wait to rub it in the faces of some of the people back home, either.

"Ain't that a shame. Those politicians are keepin' kids outta camp cuz--"

"Yes, it is a shame that your homophobic group's bigoted policies are having negative consequences on the children you're trying to help. That is certainly a shame. So much so that Boy Scouts should be, in fact, ashamed."

Who's number one?

2007-10-15T04:43:00.000-04:00

The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster is the second largest religious group at MSU.

Before I die, I must see this happen

2007-10-14T20:19:00.000-04:00

UNCG with a tan

2007-10-14T00:33:00.001-04:00

The real question is why wouldn't you want to live in Ron Paul's America?

2007-10-10T23:04:00.000-04:00

That's why the real thing costs more

2007-10-10T21:54:00.000-04:00

Have you ever been to a chorus concert and wondered if you were really able to focus and hear your friend above all the other singers, or if you just thought you could?

You could, and it's called the cocktail party effect.

I write this as my roommate Mark, the same one I tried the wormword-containing Four with, is using my headphones to try a program called I-Doser. The story of this one goes that by listening to these tracks, which play a thing called binaural tones, you can get your brain to mimic the feeling of certain drugs.

Exciting concept, really. You could be sitting in class with your iPod buds in, completely stoned. Mark's trying one called cocaine. I called dibs on ectsasy.

I found the cocktail effect when surfing through, or tumbling into, Wikipedia researching the binaural tones idea. Turns out there's science behind it--though the fact that it was discovered by a mid-19th century German means I won't be putting it in my mind--and the effect is to rearrange your brain waves from the beta ones that usually fill your waking hours to theta or delta ones that usually denote dreaming sleep. Or, in Mark's instance, the higher-frequency gamma ones that happen during something intense, like problem solving or fear.

The practical use of it is really closer to relaxation therapy than tripping on acid, a fact confirmed when Mark walks in and tosses the headphones on our coffee table.

"Well that was some bullshit."

All I needed to hear.

Power of laughter

2007-10-09T06:43:00.001-04:00

From the post below I found a clip of Ferguson talking about his recently gone father, which I thought was exceptional. He breaks from the normal late night joke routine, but often when a situation is too important to be funny is when some of the more talented humorists write their best stuff. When Dave Barry lost his own father, or after September 11, he followed those events with two heavy-hearted columns that were two of his best.

Which, in a way, makes perfect sense, because humor is a way of looking at life as being beautiful. There are few situations that can't be laughed at, and when they occur it still isn't time to grieve or mope.

Barry once said, "A sense of humor is a measurement of the extent to which we realize that we are trapped in a world almost totally devoid of reason. Laughter is how we express the anxiety we feel at this knowledge."

Even in those two somber columns Dave isn't mournful. The details he picks out, the corny politicians singing a patriotic anthem after the attacks or his father tossing aside his glasses to save young Dave in a pool, certainly evoke emotion, but they make you smile more than they make you sad. A different flavor of tears, I suppose.

I idolize Barry the way some of my friends idolize Edward R. Murrow. Murrow stood for truth and journalistic courage, and it goes without saying that we couldn't have a society without either. I look up to Murrow, too. But I still think a world without booger jokes is a world not worth living in.

Keeping your sense of humor is the most important thing in life. Well, top five. Taking yourself or anything too seriously is the worst thing you can do. Life is so simultaneously ridiculous and transient that you can't take an honest look at it and keep a straight face.

If you're not laughing, you're just not in on the joke. No soap radio.

I should be studying

2007-10-09T06:20:00.000-04:00

Best take on addiction I've heard yet:

Sweet, sweet profanity

2007-10-09T05:09:00.001-04:00

Now there's a headline I can fucking get behind. I don't agree with all of what they have to say afterward, but at least they followed it up with something--the balls to run it and the smarts to back it up.

Lost in the Intertrons

2007-10-08T13:56:00.000-04:00

Andrew and I were sitting in the Carolinian office, wasting time talking about how much we had to do and yet were not. I googled "Carolinian" and found that USC has a magazine called the Carolinian. Copycat bastards.

I scrolled down a few more links and found that there's actually a Carolinian language. Now we're getting somewhere.

It's only spoken on the Northern Mariana Islands, and even then only by about two or three thousand people, but I'm going to learn it. Not because it's named after the newspaper I work at (The Carolinian was first before all, if you're wondering) but because the CIA World Factbook says it has the highest female-to-male ratio of any country on Earth: 0.756 male for every female. (The United Arab Emirates has the worst, 2.19 male for every female.) Apparently the Guinness Book of World Records also said that Saipan, one of the country's islands, has "the most equable temperature" in the world. And they would know. They're Guinness.

So, best climate on Earth...most women per capita...tropical drinks....tropical women...and they already use the dollar as currency. I'm sold.

Or at least I was until I saw a country called Christmas Island:

A bare island named after Christmas with nothing but a airstrip on it? I'm coming for you, Santa. We need to have words about my sixth Christmas morning. That's right fat boy, I hold grudges, and 22-year-old Luke owns a lot more bats than 6-year-old Luke did.

This week's staff ed

2007-10-05T11:02:00.000-04:00

THE CAROLINIAN -- They call it an "F-bomb" for a reason. When you drop it in some situations, it will create a reaction. The bigger the bomb, naturally, the bigger the boom.

National headlines were recently made when the Colorado University student newspaper, The Rocky Mountain Collegian, ran a four-word editorial complete with four-letter expletive: "Taser this: F--- Bush." That particular expletive appeared uncensored at the top of a page in huge, bold font. Needless to say, it stuck out. Full editorial here

Before penning this week's staff ed--which to save you 1,000 words says that the Collegian was wrong on its decision to run the editorial, but there are still times cursing is called for--I took a look at some other college editorials weighing in on the same topic.

Part of me just wanted to see what every other college paper in the nation that seemed to have something to say actually had to say, but another part of me wanted to make sure we weren't just repeating something some student daily had beaten us to. Since we were writing specifically about The Carolinian's occasional tendency to include what I'll call saucy material I wasn't too worried about the latter, and lucky for me I disagreed with almost all of the ones I read, so the former didn't stifle me either.

Editor-in-chief of the OSU paper, The Lantern, got pretty close, though like a lot of people he brings up the advertising budget argument, which if put in the wrong wording can easily be a horrible point to make.

As editor you have the biggest responsibility, and in some cases - like this one - you fall the hardest when the fire is hot. Not to mention the tremendous responsibility you have to your staff. Because of this foolish action businesses have pulled tens of thousands of dollars in ad revenue from the paper, which is how independent papers make their money, and staff members are facing pay cuts because of the loss.

Aside from whatever the hell "you fall the hardest when the fire is hot" means, he's approaching it from the right angle. The paper proved itself to be capable of foolish actions, so advertisers decided to pull their money and the staff had to take a pay cut. This is not, however, an argument against making controversial decisions for the right reasons. Sometimes making the right call will still piss off advertisers, so you can't factor money into a decision like that. It can't be completely ignored that you have to pay your employees, either.

My personal favorite, The Daily Tar Heel, seems to agree with our point that the Collegian wasted their opportunity, even if they included a choice moment of irony with their editorial:

The most ironic thing is that the words used are not at all indicative of the purpose of the right to free speech: to be able to present a dignified argument without fear of persecution.

In fact, it's a type of logical fallacy called an ad hominem, in which the writer, in this case, attacks some irrelevant aspect of the person behind the argument instead of the claims of the argument itself.

Indeed, it would be an ad hominem if a writer attacked some irrelevant and made-up point--how dignified a statement is, for instance--instead of your opponent's actual argument. Calling their argument undignified couldn't get farther from the point, because free speech has nothing to do with being dignified. The courts have defended that fact time and again.

Adding "dignified" to the description of free speech sounds oddly regal for a newspaper. Surely the Tar Heel has run a letter to the editor or two it did not think matched the Queen's English, but was still free speech and therefore printable.

The University of Alabama paper was just all kinds of wrong. In addition to defending the editor's job, they coined this little ditty:

The editorial board thinks McSwane should publish an apology, because in printing the entire word - and not dashing it out - some community standards were violated.

Now, in the context of what the Collegian editorial board claims they were trying to accomplish, how would one go about making a statement on free speech by censoring yourself? The argument is nonsensical.

One thing The Carolinian's staff ed didn't touch on (simply because we didn't discuss it when talking about the editorial) was the big question everyone has been asking, whether the Collegian's editor-in-chief should keep his job or be fired. A board voted last night to let him keep his job, choosing to "admonish" the editor rather than fire him.

Admonish is defined in the BSC Manual as a reminder to the editor of his responsibilities and an encouragement to "modify" his behavior.

The board wagged their collective finger at him. Even if the members of the board thought this was the proper course of action, how can they defend it when also ruling, "It is our judgment that your decision was unprofessional and unethical." If they ruled his decision was unethical, and he still defends that decision, how can they trust him to continue holding the position?

Part of me can't blame the guy for standing his ground. He has the backing of the whole editorial board, and that speaks volumes. Another, larger part of me wonders how a group of people could get behind a decision so stupid and clearly not worth defending.

My cousin who goes to CSU says he supports the paper's decision. Apparently a lot of students up there do. The two areas of fallout that matter now are the paper getting advertisers and the much more important issue of readers trusting them in the future. If my cousin is in the majority, they might be alright.

Congratulations universe, you win

2007-09-27T18:31:00.001-04:00

Variety.com -- Dunder Mifflin is going interactive.

In a rare deal to turn a network live-action sitcom into a videogame, casual gamemaker MumboJumbo has licensed rights to "The Office" from NBC Universal.

Peacock net comedy will be the first-ever Hollywood license for the publisher, which makes inexpensive arcade-style games. It plans to turn "The Office" into a humorous game in which players have to handle jobs and play pranks at Dunder Mifflin's Scranton branch. Full article here

I stopped playing video games a few years ago when school and writing began to take over my schedule. Don't get me wrong, I still fit in a game of Madden here and there. My serious gaming days have been over for quite some time though.

But a video game based on The Office? Why God? Why create temptation you know I can't resist?

Fallout from the F-bomb - Colorado style

2007-09-25T07:01:00.000-04:00

FORT COLLINS, Colo. (AP) -- The editor of the Colorado State University newspaper says he has no plans to resign amid criticism about an obscenity used in an editorial about President Bush.

The four-word editorial, published Friday in the Rocky Mountain Collegian, said in large type, "Taser this. (Expletive) Bush."

J. David McSwane, the Collegian's editor-in-chief and a CSU junior, said the newspaper's governing board may fire him but he won't voluntarily step down.

"I think that'd be an insult to the staff who supported the editorial," McSwane told the Fort Collins Coloradoan in Monday's editions.

The newspaper's business manager has said the operation lost $30,000 in advertising in the hours after the editorial was published, and that the pay of student staffers would be cut 10 percent to compensate.

McSwane said the newspaper's student editors decided to use the obscenity because they believe CSU students are apathetic about their freedom of speech and other rights.

"We thought the best way to illustrate that point was to use our freedoms," he said. Full article here

Those who read The Carolinian may remember my opinion on cursing.

In a college paper there are times you can defend "adult language." We are, after all, printing our paper for adults. But that decision has to be defensible just like every decision has to be, from whether you run an article to hiring or firing a writer to changing the color of your skybox.

Oddly enough, my column on cursing also included the phrase "Fuck Bush."

And, like all words, curse words carry meanings and can be used for a purpose. During the course of any political discussion with friends, I will never say "I disapprove of President Bush's stances and I dislike him very much as a person." I will say, probably a number of times, "Fuck Bush." Those two words won't be the crux of my argument, of course, but it's a perfect description of how I feel about our president.

Of course, it wasn't a full 50 percent of what I had to say, and I went on to tie that usage in with the 60s Supreme Court case Cohen v. California that defended a man who had the phrase "Fuck the Draft" posted on the back of his jacket. The difference there being that the back of a jacket is only so big. With a newspaper you'd have to come up with a reason not to include seven or eight hundred words explaining your opinion. The problem with the Colorado editorial is that there isn't one.

Running a four-word editorial like that seems to be the equivalent of having an opportunity to speak with a person in great detail about your political beliefs, and instead screaming "FUCK [political group here]!" over and over. Doesn't make a lot of sense. In fact, it's a pretty stupid decision on their part, and they deserve the flak they're catching for it.

Seeing the difference between a situation where something is defensible and when it isn't is what you call editorial judgment. And, like McSwane, before writing that column I asked the rest of the editorial board what they thought about it. A couple were a little surprised that I even asked. Yes, is the obvious answer. Yes, that column is defensible.

But the same word isn't always the same word, and just yesterday I cut the word "bullshit" out of someone's column because I couldn't think of a single reason for it to be there. Being an editor sometimes means being a dick and not giving someone their way. It also means thinking long and hard about a decision and then making the right one, even if you really don't want to. On a college paper you have to realize that can include anything up to and including firing a friend. Or, more importantly, realizing when you have messed up so badly that you can't defend keeping your own job.

You shouldn't think: can I get away with this one decision?

You think: can I defend myself to the inevitable litany of questions and accusations to come? There's no defense like making consistently ethical, based on the rules decisions. No chance of a "what about that time you did this?"

In the end, it's not about you. It's about defending the newspaper that was around before you and, assuming you don't screw up too badly, will continue on in the future.

My stupid friends

2007-09-23T21:06:00.001-04:00

I have a couple friends who occasionally play "the knife game." I don't know how they got the idea, but it's the very definition of stupidity.

There are two ways to play. Both of them involve tossing a knife to each other, at which time the person hopefully catches it by the handle.

Version 1) You toss the knife until someone bleeds.

Version 2) You toss the knife until someone catches it three times in a row.

There is a third version that ends with me calling the hospital and later a friend's parents with an embarrassing explanation. They haven't played that version yet, but only by luck.

Cock-a-doodle-what?

2007-09-23T19:40:00.000-04:00

In my last semester of Spanish I was surprised to find out that different countries have different words for the sounds animals make. After listening to all of those, I think "cock-a-doodle-doo" is the most ridiculous of the bunch.

Video courtesy of Rives.

Just like the Anchorman joke

2007-09-23T17:21:00.000-04:00

After a half-hour drive up what had to be the most crooked and dust-covered mountain road in existance, evilly two-way but wide enough for just one car and teetering on a death-promising drop, my friend Ryan's boat of a car fish-tailing constantly, we got to Amanda's wedding ten minutes before it started. Just enough time to change, we thought, until we walked off the road to where we thought the wedding was located.

Nobody.

We asked a pair of hikers if they'd seen a wedding in the area and they pointed up. Way up. Up a hill/mountain that looked back at me with a "bring it on" steepness. "They're on the top," one sweaty hiker said.

There are few friends for whom I wouldn't have turned around and begun wording an apology note. Luckily Amanda is on that short list.

Pressed for time, we attacked the beast head-on, ignoring the hikers' suggestion of a flatter trail that curved around the back of the mountain, and a sign threatening a fine for walked in that restricted area. The couple was locking lips by the time I finally caught my breath. At least the view was worth it; Amanda said we could see five different states from up there (N.C., Tenn., Va., Ga. and S.C.). I didn't believe her until the sun set and we saw town lights through the Smokey Mountains' fog farther off than I thought was possible.

Amanda walked down the aisle/dirt trail barefoot, had the preacher recite a Pablo Neruda poem and refrain from saying "Jesus" or "God" once, and was later seen at the reception walking around in her wedding dress sipping a Corona.

The girl's got style.

At the reception we were challenged by Josh, the new husband, who claimed Ryan and I weren't fulfilling our reputations for drinking. We set about creating makeshift drinking games, beer pong with not enough cups and beer caps instead of pong balls was the crowd favorite. Ryan slept in the yard. I made it into the house and onto the floor. Sam, the lightweight of the group, left the bed I made for her and was found in someone's closet. Whether Sam thought the closet was a bedroom or a bathroom is still in debate.

All in all, it was the best wedding I've been to, and made me change the few things I've actually thought about for my hypothetical and very, very far off in the future wedding. It will be outside, my friend PV will be reciting the Rives poem "Glaucoma," and the wedding bulletin will be in 1940s-style newsprint.

One breakfast, 199 miles, a coffee, two Red Bulls and one rest area stop later, I'm home, minus two single friends but gaining my second set of married friends, my ex-turned-friend Leslie having gotten hitched last Sunday. PV's engaged too. They're dropping like flies.

Krasinski in Jarhead

2007-09-17T14:46:00.000-04:00

If you know me, have met me, or have shared an elevator ride with me, I've probably had enough time to ask you if you watch The Office. I'm of course referring to the hit NBC show and not its inferior British parent show, which pales in comparison to the rich characters in the American version. I usually watch an episode daily, whether online or DVD, and because there's only three seasons thus far I've seen every episode quite a few times.

So, I'm a little obsessed, so much so that The Office theme song is my unashamed ring tone.

That being the case, I'm also obsessed with the actors in the show, Jim and Pam bearing the brunt of my two-steps-from-stalker interest. I'm always surprised to learn something new about the show or the actors in it, and with the season four premiere slowly approaching (ten days and counting) I'm kicking my stalkerdom into high gear so that there's not one single piece of The Office datum I won't have in my cranium come next Thursday.

For instance, did anyone else know John Krasinski (Jim) played a small part in the movie Jarhead?

Or did you know Jenna Fischer (Pam) wrote, directed, and starred in the 2004 mockumentary LolliLove.

They have lives outside of the television. How weird.

When does "dog bites man" become news?

2007-09-13T15:59:00.001-04:00

When it's the dog of two-time Pro Bowler first-round draft pick Bengals corner Deltha O’Neal, that's when. That's when you know you're big time; the local news reports on things your pet does.

Everyday Ardor

2007-09-05T19:20:00.000-04:00

On a bench in Boston Common
a stranger, brown-papered whiskey bottle in hand,
told me to fall in love every chance I get
I was desenchanted 'til I realized what he meant

So I fell in love

with the grocery cashier
who shyly eyed me under thick glasses, carefully packed my bags.
with that boy from my class
the one with sunstreaked hair and careful comments of Monet.
with the gentle faced stranger on the street
her sleepy eyes and ready smile.

and I'm falling in love with you.
You, who considers my words
Who curls your tongue around my rough words
Who fingers my pages
A romantic
A cynic
A critic

You who never let yourself believe
Love is so simple, humanly possible and uncomplicated.
It occurs with the ease of puffed breath
quicker than a skeptic can cough.

- Noelle Hartbarger

I found this in a friend's Facebook page. I'm putting it here so it will spread the way a forest fire does, wind-carried glowing embers raining down on too-dry grass patches.

Highlight of my day

2007-08-27T18:49:00.000-04:00

You remember that story I wrote about the WUAG DJ breaking the world record?

Did you read it? No?

Well, WIRED! did.

Definitely the highlight of my day. Since about 7:30 this morning, anyway.

Been a while

2007-08-24T02:14:00.000-04:00

I write for newspapers. Did I mention that? Sometimes I get caught up in that, for a month or so at a time, and I forget to update this thing.

For instance, I wrote a column about ice cream. It's riveting.

I wrote something your parents shouldn't read. My parents haven't yelled at me for it yet. Maybe they paid attention to the title. I used to catch an ear full about once every three weeks over something I wrote--damn Internet making things available to whomever. I hope they're not jaded already. I'm only 22, and dying young went out of style in the 60s.

I spent most of the summer writing about everything from world-touring bands to garage bands to garage artists to a guy touring across country with his guitar and his bicycle because he couldn't afford gas, but would rather do that than not play. I participated in a spelling bee, and was eliminated in the first round--a proud moment to be a writer. I drove all over the Triad for 30-minute interviews in neighborhoods in Winston or shrimp bars in High Point. I wrote a story about a musical production of "The Full Monty"--and I interviewed all the actors by phone. I gave blood for the first time, which wasn't writing-related but did happen in a conference room of the News & Record. Mostly I just wrote about too many bands to mention, and I have the towering stack of free CDs to prove it.

But the definite highlight of the summer was writing the Go Triad cover story about Johnny Walker, the radio DJ who stayed on air for 175 hours straight to win the world record for longest radio broadcast. I dropped in on Johnny a few times a day from day one until the end. It was the most involved I've ever been with a story, and it was also the most fun I'd ever had writing one. The hardest part was whittling down my 3,000 words of notes alone into a 1,100ish-word story. Filling a reporter's notebook from front to back was satisfying in itself.

And I'm sure if I focused all that typing into one endeavor I'd have a book done by now.

World becoming increasingly unsuitable for my lifestyle

2007-08-22T19:31:00.000-04:00

"Work Life Curbs Greece's Healthy Napping Custom"

NPR--For most of history, climate shaped the way people lived their everyday lives. In some of the world's hottest places, people still take a midday siesta. But modern life is making that a rarity, even as science shows that napping may be good for your health.

I don't know if I want to live in a world where, even if it's a place I've never been to or will actually visit, people don't take siestas. In my perfect world, conversations like this would echo through office lobbies.

Secretary - "Mr. Jenkins' office."
Boss - "Tom Jenkins, please."
Secretary - "Mr. Jenkins is taking a nap sir, may I take a message?"
Boss - "What? Why is Jenkins sleeping in the middle of a work day?!?"
Secretary - "Because fuck you, that's why."

I don't want a real job or an office. I just want a secretary to tell people to fuck off for me.

Newsflash: Bush is/has an asshole

2007-07-20T17:28:00.000-04:00

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Vice President Dick Cheney will serve as acting president briefly Saturday while President Bush is anesthetized for a routine colonoscopy, White House spokesman Tony Snow said Friday.

President Bush will transfer power to Vice President Dick Cheney for a few hours Saturday, a spokesman says.

Bush is scheduled to have the medical procedure, expected to take about 2 1/2 hours, at the presidential retreat at Camp David, Maryland, Snow said.

You see, in order for the doctor to fit a tube up there, Bush is required to pull his head out of his own ass. It's technically illegal for him to do so as a professional politician, so he's assigning Cheney to fill in during the procedure. Cheney is so deep up his own ass that he's coming back out again, so I think America will be okay. The "okay" we've become used to anyway.

But really, say it out loud. "President Dick Cheney." Doesn't it just give you chills? And night terrors?

Feed me Seymour

2007-07-17T20:14:00.000-04:00

Washington, D.C. - An Iowa farm boy today will receive the Congressional Gold Medal in honor of his lifetime work saving millions of people around the world from starvation.

Norman Borlaug, a pioneer of the "Green Revolution" who was born on a Cresco farm in 1914, will become one of only five people in history to receive the Congressional Gold Medal, Nobel Peace Prize and Presidential Medal of Freedom.

A small prize for the greatest man to live. Ever. Better than Jesus, Gandhi, Mother Theresa and even Bob Hope. Way better than Carson Daly.

Dadaladadadadadadadadalalaladada.com

2007-07-14T14:20:00.000-04:00

I searched for "Zen" on YouTube and I found this.

I Googled the phrase "meaning of life". It took me to a Wikipedia page where the phrase "citation needed" appears 168 times.

Under related articles in that Wiki I found "Meaning of Death", which taught me about "Informational Theoretical Death." It's a term stolen from computer science that means some event -- an injury, a disease, anything -- has destroyed someone's mind to a point in which they can no longer function as the same person they were before that event.

"Using this outlook on death, it is possible that a person who is suffering amnesia is, in essence, dead."

Our memories change, we change, and the person you used to be dies. How do you hold a funeral for a personality?

I forget what it is I was originally looking for, which is slightly less annoying than not being able to tell whether or not you found it.

What I've been up to this summer

2007-07-09T00:28:00.000-04:00

I found a YouTube video of the Greensboro band Farewell, Epitaph's most recent addition to their stable of artists, playing in Syracuse, New York.

I interviewed the band for Go Triad right before they started this tour. It was odd for me, being one of my first assignments for Go Triad -- aside from my Cheap Eats column I've been doing for a while -- and I'd already started listening to Farewell a couple years prior when my then-girlfriend was friends with someone who was dating blah blah blah. My favorite moment of this summer happened during that interview:

Me - "What's the most "rock star" thing to happen to you guys since you got signed?"

Big bass player whose name escapes me right now - "This."

So if you're like most of my friends and have only seen me sporadically throughout the summer, that's why.

Cheap Eats: Late night dining

2007-05-08T03:02:00.000-04:00

GO TRIAD -- The bartender is saying you have to leave, but your stomach is telling you it's time for something solid in your belly. The bad news about hearing last call, foodwise, is that once you've closed down the bar, you've also closed down most restaurants.

Most often, the solution is an all-night diner, but their busiest time and main reason for staying open late is the hours right after the bars shut down. Sometimes, you just want to grab some food and go home. The only problem is — what's open this late?

Full column

In America, school sucks. In Iraq, school blows.

2007-05-03T19:32:00.000-04:00

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- American soldiers discovered a girls' school being built north of Baghdad had become an explosives-rigged "death trap," the U.S. military said Thursday.

The plot at the Huda Girls' school in Tarmiya was a "sophisticated and premeditated attempt to inflict massive casualties on our most innocent victims," military spokesman Maj. Gen. William Caldwell said.

The military suspects the plot was the work of al Qaeda, because of its nature and sophistication, Caldwell said in an interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer.

This discovery says two things about the people who set this bomb.

1) The fact that they set a death trap for hundreds of undebatably innocent children speaks to the lengths these murderers will go for their disgusting cause.

2) The fact that the plot was uncovered "when troopers in the Salaheddin province found detonating wire across the street from the school. They picked up the wire and followed its trail, which led to the school" makes me feel much better about our chances of catching these guys. They're using the 21st century equivalent of Wile E. Coyote's trail of gunpowder. Just look for anything labeled "ACME" and I think we'll be okay.

Seems like you're lucky if it ever change from red to green

2007-04-30T04:40:00.000-04:00

In Jacksonville there's a guy who defies explanation. You really just have to see for yourself.

I can't remember if we called this guy "Ghetto Blaster" or if that name was for the guy who rode his bike all over town with an oversized boombox tied to the handlebars, but before today this guy's identity was a mystery to me. We saw him not just on this corner but walking all over town. He does not stop moving. Maybe he's always on the lookout for more D-sized batteries. I have a theory that he is the ghost of a person who OD'd on a mixture of meth and cocaine in the mid-80s, and his spirit is still coming down from that high.

Now, thanks to the Internets, we know. His name is Radio. This is his workout. (Disregard the first 20 seconds of this video, NSFW.)

This is Radio's musical debut.

And finally, this is Radio being given what is possibly his first t-shirt.

Thank you, Radio, for all the head-turning, car door-locking entertainment you have given your community.

South Korean sentry-machine-gun-robot-death-tron

2007-04-30T03:31:00.000-04:00

South Korean son - Dad, why can't we walk on the 38th parallel?
South Korean father - Well son, a long time ago people put so many mines along the border between North and South Korea that no human can ever cross it safely again.
South Korean son - And why can't we go to Seoul?
South Korean father - Well son, Seoul belongs to the machines now.
South Korean son - Dad, has no one running our government ever seen Terminator?
South Korean father - Nope.
South Korean son - How about Robocop?
South Korean father - No.
South Korean son - WarGames?
South Korean father - Never heard of it. Why?
South Korean son - No reason. The toaster wants more bread, by the way. You have 30 seconds to comply.

Animals that were never meant to be seen

2007-04-26T02:15:00.000-04:00

WHOA! There's a host of new photos from the deep abyss up at ScienceReaDigg.COM. It's enough to make you never swim again, were you to forget that these creatures can only live in depths to which humans can't physically travel.

They take the pictures with this thing. I can only assume they have two of them, or some unfortunate was made to swim outside for a quick snap of the vessel. Some of the cooler pics:

That's a living creature. Mind-blowing.

Something so weird all they could think to call it was "Giant Tube Worm."

Completely undiscovered species. You're looking at the only evidence proving these things ever existed.

Cheap Eats Jibaro

2007-04-26T01:33:00.000-04:00

GO TRIAD -- Tate Street has been just a little too quiet since the record shop Gate City Noise left the block.

Now, at last, there's music back on Tate, but this time it's not indie rock. It's merengue.

The new Latin café Jibaro has only been in business a few weeks, but the word about this place was buzzing long before its doors opened. Full column

I need a better camera. It's too hard to frame images with this ridiculously slow shutter speed.

Whitlock: Time for Jackson, Sharpton to Step Down

2007-04-12T03:25:00.000-04:00

"I’m calling for Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, the president and vice president of Black America, to step down."

Under the curious but understandable designation of "Sports Commentary," AOL writer Jason Whitlock takes the ministers Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson aside and gives them what for. Whitlock says that Sharpton have done nothing to help blacks in the past 20 years, and uses their reaction to Don Imus' racist remarks toward the Rutgers women's basketball team as an example.

This is the reason you've got to keep an eye on sports writers. People don't realize it these guys sort of exist in their own little athletic world, but given the opportunity there are a lot of sports journalists who can put you on your ass given the opportunity. Like Dave Barry's column after 9/11 or after his dad died - which as you can guess weren't funny but were a couple of his best, period - it's a combination of sheer writing talent and delivering something completely unexpected.

Now to Whitlock (I'm picking rather long quotes from a rather long column):

Hey, what Imus said, calling the Rutgers players "nappy-headed hos," was ignorant, insensitive and offensive. But so are many of the words that come out of the mouths of radio shock jocks/comedians.

Imus’ words did no real damage. Let me tell you what damaged us this week: the sports cover of Tuesday’s USA Today. This country’s newspaper of record published a story about the NFL and crime and ran a picture of 41 NFL players who were arrested in 2006. By my count, 39 of those players were black.

You want to talk about a damaging, powerful image, an image that went out across the globe?

We’re holding news conferences about Imus when the behavior of NFL players is painting us as lawless and immoral. Come on. We can do better than that. Jesse and Al are smarter than that.

First of all, I take issue with Whitlock calling USA Today a "newspaper of record. The LA and NY Times, the Post, Wall Street Journal, those are records. USA Today is more like the pop-up book of journalism.

Imus' statements are no doubt receiving national news coverage because, with Michael Richards and Mel Gibson's high-profile tirades, this is still an issue the public is interested in, but what is the actual good coming out of this? Imus is being demonized, which is good on some level. As happened with Richards, though not so much with Gibson, it sets an example: "say something racist in public and your career will end." Imus isn't done, yet, but he does appear to be on a downward slope to retirement.

Had Imus’ predictably poor attempt at humor not been turned into an international incident by the deluge of media coverage, 97 percent of America would’ve never known what Imus said. His platform isn’t that large and it has zero penetration into the sports world.

Imus certainly doesn’t resonate in the world frequented by college women. The insistence by these young women that they have been emotionally scarred by an old white man with no currency in their world is laughably dishonest.

The Rutgers players are nothing more than pawns in a game being played by Jackson, Sharpton and [Rutgers women’s basketball coach Vivian] Stringer.

Again, I agree and disagree. Had it not been for a cell phone video, Michael Richards' racist rant probably wouldn't have received nearly as much attention. It's a trend I noticed (probably well after everyone else was in the know) at the journalism convention in Portland over Spring Break.

Well, I should say I noticed it in the hotel room during a break between sessions, so it had very little to do with the conference aside from me being trapped with little else to do other than watch TV news. Ugh.

CNN was playing a cell phone video from some midwest state that showed a man running into a supermarket and attacking four people with a knife. Random attack, completely unprovoked, no one died, they caught the guy soon after. Not really national news. But with the video, hell, we've got some ratings! The inherent hackery of television will always keep me from taking TV news seriously. I'll admit that printing the words Richards said and a description of the events just isn't as powerful and can't tell the story as true as video can, but when you put small news over big news because the small news has an eye-catching video, then you're not a journalist. You're a hack.

But this argument doesn't really apply here. Imus was hosting a national radio show and, up until April 11, a TV simulcast. It's not as if he didn't think his words would travel. Pointing out that his voice only reaches a few thousand, as opposed to the millions it ended up reaching through media coverage, is a little irrelevent. There's a certain point where something said becomes public property, and for Imus that's when he starting talking into a microphone hooked to an antenna.

We can’t win the war over verbal disrespect and racism when we have so obviously and blatantly surrendered the moral high ground on the issue. Jesse and Al might win the battle with Imus and get him fired or severely neutered. But the war? We don’t stand a chance in the war. Not when everybody knows “nappy-headed ho’s” is a compliment compared to what we allow black rap artists to say about black women on a daily basis.

We look foolish and cruel for kicking a man who went on Sharpton’s radio show and apologized. Imus didn’t pull a Michael Richards and schedule an interview on Letterman. Imus went to the Black vice president’s house, acknowledged his mistake and asked for forgiveness.

It's not like Don Imus blamed his behavior on alcoholism and half-assed the apology; he was serious about it, and he's taking his licks like a man. I'm not saying let him off the hook completely, and it's quite possible that without this level of backlash that he wouldn't have apologized, but enouch is enough reverend. Do the Christian thing and turn the other cheek.

We have more important issues to deal with than Imus. If we are unwilling to clean up the filth and disrespect we heap on each other, nothing will change with our condition. You can fire every Don Imus in the country, and our incarceration rate, fatherless-child rate, illiteracy rate and murder rate will still continue to skyrocket.

A man who doesn’t respect himself wastes his breath demanding that others respect him.

We don’t respect ourselves right now. If we did, we wouldn’t call each other the N-word. If we did, we wouldn’t let people with prison values define who we are in music and videos. If we did, we wouldn’t call black women bitches and hos and abandon them when they have our babies.

If we had the proper level of self-respect, we wouldn’t act like it’s only a crime when a white man disrespects us. We hold Imus to a higher standard than we hold ourselves. That’s a (freaking) shame.

Wow. What he said.

Failure to Communicate: My beef with PETA

2007-04-04T11:43:00.000-04:00

THE CAROLINIAN -- I heard a lot of differing opinions about Morals Week, last week's five-day event held by the College Republicans (CR), though mostly people were different only in their reasoning for hating the CRs. A lot of people thought Straight Pride Day was a silly concept, since straight people are a vast majority and not discriminated against in any way; even PRIDE! welcomes straights. I thought it was funny to put that day celebrating "traditional family values" right before "Support Our Troops" day, however, since it's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" that keeps kicking out soldiers, some of them valuable Arab translators (a Clinton compromise now upheld by conservatives).

But Friday's PETA Barbecue (People for the Eating of Tasty Animals) was the one day that everyone I talked to seemed to be on the same page about. (I'll admit bias; it's safe to assume I don't talk to many Republicans.) The day appeared to be a bit pointless since most people see PETA (the real group) as a bunch of people who simply care for animals, and no part of being Republican means hating vegetarians. But this is the one day where I agreed with the CRs. They reminded me of why I hate PETA.

I could go on all day about the bad things about PETA that overwhlem the good, such as how ridiculous the idea of "total animal liberation" is and why their pet-owning members should read the brochure more closely, or how PETA groups protest shelters that put down animals even though it's been proven that PETA itself has put down thousands of recovered strays, or the group's debatable ties to the Animal Liberation Front - listed by the Department of Homeland Security and FBI as a domestic terrorist group - but it's really all because of one person: Mary Beth Sweetland.

Full column here

Greatest. Pickup. Ever.

2007-03-26T13:49:00.000-04:00

The Ford 2008 Super Duty Pickup has been recalled because when they were making it they forgot to attach the part that stops the truck from shooting fire out of its tailpipe. No, really, click the video.

Although, one would think this would be a standard option on something that's just two steps from a monster truck as it is.

Yummy

2007-03-25T22:45:00.000-04:00

GO TRIAD -- The top of your frosty glass bottle of Coca-Cola just pops off with a twist of the wrist. A warm spring breeze blows, and long skirts flap as the girls run off to class at N.C. State Normal and Industrial College. It's almost a century ago, and you're eating a hot dog outside the newly opened Yum Yum Better Ice Cream shop.

Then, your cell phone goes off, bringing you back the present. It's 2007, and N.C. State Normal and Industrial College is now UNCG and co-ed. Still, not much has changed at Yum Yum. That same hot dog shop that's been around for a century is still there, open for business.

Full column

Reuben Revisited

2007-03-10T20:27:00.000-05:00

GO TRIAD -- It wasn't long ago that I wrote a column about the Reuben sandwich at Jay's Deli in Greensboro. I was less than pleased and announced that I had just about given up on finding a decent Reuben in Greensboro.

The e-mail floodgates opened, as they do when you write a negative review, and enough of you suggested places I didn't know of or hadn't thought to try. So, I decided to give the column a second look.

Full column

Why do atheists care about religion?

2007-03-10T01:34:00.000-05:00

Techno music and poor production value aside, I agree with every word of this video. North Carolina does indeed say in its constitution that no atheist can hold office. I'm glad I quit before making Eagle Scout. I hate blue laws. I hate that people think this is a Christian nation. I hate that a lot of people are ignorant to think it was founded on Christianity. Grrrr.

Blogging the conference Day #2

2007-03-09T20:12:00.000-05:00

We went to Howell's, which is a bookstore that literally covers an entire city block and stands 5 stories tall. I'm genuinely surprised I got out of there with only buying 12 books (though 10 of them were a collection of the complete James Joyce in a very snazzy green case).

The other two were my favorite childhood book that I've been looking for for years, pictured above, and a pop-up book by my favorite living poet.

EDIT: Powell's, not Howell's.

The bike rack outside Howell's was decorated with metallic literary references. I enjoyed them.

Finally, my record collection is complete.

I spoke too soon.

Portland has unlabeled metal sculptures scattered randomly around the city. My first thought was corporate art, since they have that generic look about them and are very large for no real reason, but they tend to appear outside parking garages and other buildings that probably wouldn't pay for art, much less clean the bathrooms.

I've seen these on phones all over the city. They go on to explain in tiny type that the Patriot Act allows public phones to be tapped and blah blah blah. Hopefully it's some sort of civil disobedience, because informing the terrorists of the tapped phone seems like the opposite of what we should be doing. In fact, I don't think any signifigant part of the War on Terrorism should involve stickers at all.

The McDonald's here had a bacon cheeseburger. Bacon on a McDonald's burger, Chet and I had never seen such a thing. We are from the South and easy to amuse.

The McDonald's also had a little lounge you could sit in and watch CNN. The fast food here is just operating on an entirely new level.

Blogging the conference Day #1

2007-03-08T00:39:00.000-05:00

6:40 AM, Raleigh-Durham International.

Calm as Hindu cows.

But with a view like that who wouldn't be.

Weird twisting cloud formation. Possibly a devastating tornado somewhere in Kentucky.

Chicago was covered in snow. We all regretted not having time to go outside and play.

Gray and freezing on the ground, but a mile above Chicago it's nothing but billowing heaven.

Riding public transportation.

That's right, public transportation. Contrary to what you might have heard in North Carolina, it actually does exist. In Portland at least.

The symbol for the Oregon lottery is literally a hand crossing its fingers.

Portland got some big ol' buildins.

The world's first high-tension power line was strung up between Portland and Millamette Falls on June 3, 1889. The historical marker for this was placed on a large rock, for some reason.

Looking back in 20 years this probably won't be funny anymore

2007-03-06T21:55:00.000-05:00

My friend Liz just made me a group on Facebook: The Buy Luke a Drink Fund. It came up in conversation with her that I'd have a lot more money if I stopped buying booze, to which I replied "Yes, but then how would I get booze?"

The group's slogan says to buy me drinks "because Luke is never euphoric unless mildly intoxicated and he's always in need of a good drink." The latter is certainly true, unless you saw me last night. If you did then, well, yeah. Whatever.

Point is, join this group and buy me drinks. Invite your friends, either to the group or to the pub so they can buy me drinks. I'm not responsible enough to manage my money AND buy my own liquor. It's just not working out.

P.S. - I'm not an alcoholic. I feel like I should just throw that one out there. I just have a penchant for the sauce, that's all. It'd be out of order at this point anyway. First you become a successful writer/artist/whatever, then you become an alcoholic. Not before.

Blogging the conference

2007-03-06T21:24:00.000-05:00

Tuesday - It's 9:30 the night before my flight and "Indonesian airliner bursts into flames on landing" is the headline on CNN right now. Awesome.

I'm assuming they have the Internet in Portland, so I'm going to attempt updates every so often. I've got that part figured out. Things like where my raincoat is, what I can legally bring on a plane, and how we're getting around Portland once we arrive, those things haven't even begun to cross my mind.

It's not too late for a road trip

2007-03-06T17:39:00.000-05:00

From: Greensboro, NC
To: Portland, OR
Drive: 2,792 mi (about 1 day 18 hours)

I've only flown once in my life. My family flew to and from Atlanta on a trip to Six Flags. The ride there was bumpy like the rollercoaster rides I was happy to be anticipating. The ride back was bumpy like the inevitable scene in every hijack movie where something goes wrong with the plane and the passengers are now horrified by two ways of being killed. For me, instead of gun-toting lunatics strolling the aisles I was tortured by my heart and stomach. Every bump or turn the plane made was a knot in my gut and a pounding in my chest. There was nothing different about the plane ride, it just wasn't fun anymore.

Tomorrow a few of us from The Carolinian are headed to the west coast for a journalism conference. Our plane goes airborne at 6:40 AM. I still think we should have rented a van and made a road trip of it. With one positive and one negative experience it's impossible to say if the two flights carrying us to Portland and the three bringing us back will be good or bad, but I plan on dealing with them the same way I deal with most things: drinking too much and scribbling furiously in a moleskin notebook. The results of which, along with pictures, will be posted here in a week.

What Atomic Engineering really teaches at State

2007-03-01T10:59:00.000-05:00

THIS is what happens when you try to show off in Raleigh. Or, when you're just hanging around my asshole friends. And you didn't think an Atomic Wedgie was possible. Tsk tsk.

Most balla shit ever.

Cheap Eats - Dr. J's

2007-02-25T17:05:00.000-05:00

Go Triad -- When you think of hospitals or the military, one of the last things you'll think about is good food. But at Dr. J's House of Soul Food, which is called by the nickname owner John Johnson picked up while serving as an Army medic, that's the only thing you'll be getting. Full column

Chitlins are the cooked intestines of a pig. They are the organ that a pig digests its food with. It is not food itself.

I won't embellish the details or tell the long story of me trying chitlins. All you need to know: Chitlins taste a little like chicken, and a little like pig shit.

That is all.

Failure to Communicate: Make your choice: Be gay or be a bigot

2007-02-14T14:44:00.000-05:00

The Carolinian -- Two things surprised me about this year's Superbowl. One, that anyone actually thought the Bears were going to win I think is beyond belief. Two, the commercials were absolutely horrible this year. Most companies didn't even put in the effort to make a new commercial for the Superbowl, and of those that did few were anything resembling creative or funny. Perhaps that was a smart move on their part.

One company that did make a new commercial met with almost immediate protest. Snickers launched an ad showing two mechanics leaning over a car engine. One pulls out a Snickers bar and begins eating it. The other, overcome by the Snickers's deliciousness, begins eating the other end of the bar until the pair's lips accidentally meet in the middle, a la Lady and the Tramp. The two guys recoil, then one shouts for them to "Do something manly!" at which point they each grab a handful of their own chest hair and rip it out. It's somewhere around here that I burst out laughing, whether from their exaggerated reaction or the fact that they thought tearing out a clump of chest hair was manly I don't know.

But you won't see this commercial on TV. Snickers pulled the commercial after a few gay rights groups - like the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) and the Matthew Shepard Foundation - condemned it, saying that it made humor out of homophobia. It's sad, really.

The commercial isn't getting a laugh from homophobic jokes. If anything it's making fun of the guys reacting in that way, since the exaggerated reaction is the punch line, but it's not homophobia in any accurate sense of the word. Homophobia refers to fear of or discrimination against homosexuals. There are no homosexuals in the commercial; there are two heterosexual males. And two straight guys kissing is just... gross. Stick with me on this.

It's okay to make a joke out of two straight guys being repulsed by kissing each other, because straight guys aren't supposed to kiss. A straight guy, and I think I can speak for the group on this one, would generally be disgusted by the thought of kissing another guy. I'm not weirded out by gay guys kissing; I've been on campus here for more than 10 minutes so I've seen it happen a few times. It's fine for gay guys to do it. That's their thing. Most of us aren't afraid that we're secretly gay either. We just don't want to smooch on dudes, that's all. It's not our thing, hence us being heterosexual. Full column here

I had to cut it because of length, but I wanted to mention the absolutely ridiculous recent incident with a showing of The Vagina Monologues in Florida.

BBC -- Stage play The Vagina Monologues has been renamed at a theatre in Florida after a complaint about the title.

It will be known as The Hoohaa Monologues - a child slang word for the female organ - after a woman in Atlantic Beach complained.

Bryce Pfanenstiel from The Atlantic Theatre told local TV station Channel 4 the woman said she was "offended" when her niece asked her what a vagina was.

The TV network claim the play's director is not happy about the change.

Just two days later the play's organizers got the name changed back, but how pathetic is it that "vagina" is now offensive? It's the medical term for the female bodypart. It's not like the girl was even asking about the birds and the bees; it's a fairly important piece of her anatomy that she will have to become aware of sooner or later. The story doesn't say how old the girl was, but I'd argue that old enough to read is old enough to label your own body parts.

Only infants or infantile adults need to hear baby talk.

2007-02-13T12:40:00.000-05:00

NEW BRITAIN, Conn. -- A former college newspaper editor who wrote an article describing rape as a "magical experience" apologized to a large crowd of students and faculty at Central Connecticut State University.

John Petroski's Feb. 7 article in The Recorder was headlined, "Rape Only Hurts If You Fight It." It argued that rape has been a positive force in western civilization and benefits "ugly women."

The 23-year-old sophomore history major was removed as the newspaper's opinion editor over the weekend amid protests by campus groups. Critics also demanded the resignation of editor Mark Rowan and the paper's faculty advisers.

Wow. I'm certainly not the ballsiest person to ever grace the pages of The Carolinian, though what I say is occasionally enough to get a concerned call from my family or comments from classmates, and I'm a big proponent of the George Carlin school of anything can be funny (including rape: "Picture Porky Pig raping Elmer Fudd.") so long as you approach it correctly, but even I say they crossed the line on that one.

The closest I've ever come to joking about rape was a Faux News about a year ago, and even that didn't make fun of rape victims. It made fun of the South Dakota conservatives who said a rape victim couldn't get an abortion. Still, some people didn't think it was funny. Unfortunately for them a lot of others did.

I don't see the faculty advisor going down for it, depending on how closely he or she actually worked with the paper. If The Carolinian did something similar to that I can't see Holian going down for it. But how does the head editor defend keeping his job? How are they even considering keeping the writer on staff? That's a sad display of no accoutability.

Either you believe in and back up the things you print or you don't. There is no middle ground. If you're not willing to go to the mattresses defending what you printed then the ink should have never met the paper.

TIME: Another Unabomber in the Making?

2007-02-13T12:06:00.000-05:00

Time.com -- He calls himself the Bishop, an unthreatening sounding name if there ever was one, but law enforcement and private security officials fear he may be another unabomber in the making. In late January, the mysterious figure sent a letter bomb to two Midwestern financial services companies. The message inside both packages, which were discovered by mail clerks, read "Bang! You're dead". The boxes arrived at American Century Investments in Kansas City and Perkins, Wolf, McDonnell and Co., a Chicago financial services company. Both had all the makings of a pipe bomb, a PVC pipe filled with buckshot and smokeless powder, plus protruding wires. But the sender had not included a power source, which indicated to investigators that The Bishop, meant to terrify, not kill — at least not yet.

Why the media isn't all over this like they were Anna Nicole Smith I don't know. Maybe we're less about terror and more about blonde white women as a culture right now. It's probably for the best; psychos always love attention. It'll flare up once he kills someone though.

The scariest part about this isn't that he's sending bombs without a coherent grasp on basic grammar or spelling - though that could be him putting on a show. The scariest part is the last graph:

"Looking back to the Unabomber case, Theodore Kaczynski began sending IEDs in 1978," Burton said. "Despite the large quantity of physical evidence, it was not forensics that led to his 1996 arrest, but rather a tip from his brother." In the meantime, Kaczynski had killed three and injured 23 with his devices

You can make a bomb out of almost anything. You can mail a bomb to anyone and get away with it. It's so easy it's scary. Spend a week making a computer virus and set a country's economy back a few million. One person can shut down almost any website, anytime, from anywhere with a DNS attack. There's a guy in Arizona that'll sell you plans, anonymously, for a .50 caliber sniper rifle that no one will ever be able to trace back to you.

Technology has made us a herd of sheep terrified by lone wolves.

Cheap Eats - Mountain Fried Chicken

2007-02-08T18:56:00.000-05:00

For a place I was told has the best fried chicken in Winston-Salem, Mountain Fried Chicken sure didn't seem that busy.

When I arrived about dinnertime, the place was practically empty. Not just in the number of customers, which doubled when I walked in alone, but some essential restaurant equipment seemed to be missing. Chairs, for example, were scarce. Tables that could seat four had only one chair.

This chicken is supposed to be second to none, but the feel of this place had me thinking the table with five-gallon jugs of condiments was overly optimistic, as if they're just hoping for that busload of customers to pull in. That or a victorious football team looking to douse its coach with mustard.

Full column here

Everyone loves quotes

2007-02-04T06:31:00.000-05:00

Here are a few choice bits of wisdom from Elbert Hubbard, famed American writer and extremely quotable fellow, starting with the best advice I've ever gotten: "To avoid criticism, do nothing, say nothing, be nothing."

"Folks who never do any more than they are paid for, never get paid more than they do."

"How many a man has thrown up his hands at a time when a little more effort, a little more patience would have achieved success?"

"Many a man's reputation would not know his character if they met on the street."

"Never explain--your friends do not need it and your enemies will not believe you anyway."

"The greatest word in the English language is 'Sufficiency.'"

"Life without absorbing occupation is hell--joy consists in forgetting life."

"Our admiration is so given to dead martyrs that we have little time for living heroes."

"If you suffer, thank God! - it is a sure sign that you are alive."

"Never get married in college; it's hard to get a start if a prospective employer finds you've already made one mistake."

"Know what you want to do, hold the thought firmly, and do every day what should be done, and every sunset will see you that much nearer the goal."

"The supernatural is the natural not yet understood."

"The world is moving so fast these days that the man who says it can't be done is generally interrupted by someone doing it."

"Victory; a matter of staying power."

"We awaken in others the same attitude of mind we hold toward them."

"We work to become, not to acquire."

"The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one."

Knowledge is Power #2

2007-02-04T05:28:00.000-05:00

In rural North Carolina it's not at all uncommon to see people burning piles fallen leaves during fall. There's no other way to get rid of them out in the county. But I didn't know that inhaling the smoke from burning poison ivy will cause a reaction in your lung similar to the one that happens on your skin. It's supposed to hurt. Rake carefully.

Pick your salad ingredients carefully as well, because eating poison ivy can kill you. That bit of info should be at least somewhat startling since urushiol, the irritating chemical in poison ivy, is found in mangos. It's in a much smaller amount, sure, but some people get a poison ivy-esque reaction from just handling the skin or sap. The fruit is safe to eat, though. So they say.

By the way:
This is a picture of poison ivy.
This is a picture of jewelweed, which can be used to prevent or treat poison ivy. Note the obvious difference. It's basically safer to just rub them both on you.

Knowledge is Power #1

2007-02-04T04:16:00.000-05:00

"There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge." - Bertrand Russell

I'm going to start posting random and most likely useless facts as I come across them. Partially because they're interesting, partially because it gives me an excuse to screw around on the Internet, and partially because reinforcing facts immediately - like writing something about them - helps you remember them. Slowly revealing a list of things I didn't know will also give you a pretty good estimate of how dumb I really am.

"One time" - Refers to the cops. It's said by the first person to spot a police car or cop on foot, and means that the speaker has had the first look so no one else should look. People doing double-takes or multiple members of a group eyeing a police officer can grab a cop's attention.

I first heard this in the movie Menace II Society in a scene where it was pretty obvious the guy was using it to refer to the cop car speeding directly at him. Never again did I hear this phrase until about five minutes ago when I heard The Game use it on his newest album. I understood it meant cops, I just had no idea why. Now you know too.

You learn something everyday

2007-02-03T21:56:00.000-05:00

Telma Hopkins (seen upper right of the picture above), who played Aunt Rachel on the show "Family Matters," prefaced her acting career with one in music. She's the woman on the Shaft theme song who says "Shut your mouth!"

Supplemental fact: Steve Urkel, the show's most popular character, was originally only supposed to appear once. Overwhelmingly positive audience response kept the dork on-screen.

And now you know.

Ledeing the way

2007-02-03T17:07:00.000-05:00

I've been struggling with ledes lately - the first sentence in a story, and the most important one. It's the only sentence that matters if the reader is only casually looking at your article. (It's spelled that way to avoid confusion with "leading," which is the space between lines of text, and something to do with an old type of printing press made from lead.) Today I looked to a few Associated Press stories for inspiration. I've learned you're going to want something that will grab the reader's attention:

BAGHDAD, Iraq - A suicide bomber driving a truck loaded with explosives hidden beneath cooking oil, canned food and bags of flour obliterated a Baghdad food market on Saturday, killing at least 121 people in one of the most fearsome attacks in the capital since the U.S. invasion in 2003.

This suicide bombing is the worst thing to hit Baghdad since....America! With news you're also going to want it to set the article's tone as unbiased and fair-handed:

WASHINGTON - The House passed a $463.5 billion spending bill Wednesday that covers about one-sixth of the federal budget as Democrats cleared away the financial mess they inherited from Republicans.

Good, but a little dry. Something like "Dragging themselves out from under the rotting elephant carcass still stinking up America's capitol, the Democrats took a break from hugging baby kittens to win an all-too-rare victory for working people, the downtrodden, and orphans today." Sometimes you're lucky enough for the story to write itself:

JAKARTA, Feb 2 (Reuters) - Indonesia will drop hundreds of concrete balls into a mud volcano in a bid to brake the flow of hot liquid that has displaced more than 10,000 people and inundated entire villages in Java, an official said on Friday.

Seriously? They're trying to plug up the volcano with rock? Were they not present for the initial eruption? Because that's like treating a bullet wound by reloading the gun. I've got to read this. Just like the latest from Hollywood Boulevard:

LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- A man dressed as Chewbacca was arrested after police said the street performer head-butted a tour guide operator in front of Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood.

Really, any news story that opens with "A man dressed as _______ was arrested" or "head-butted a _______ in Hollywood" is pretty much gold. The surprising thing to me about this story is the tour guide approached a visibly angry six-foot-four man who pays his bills by dressing up as Chewbacca and didn't think he was going to get his ass kicked. Lesson number one: Let the Wookie win.

Isn't this a commuter school anyway?

2007-02-01T05:11:00.000-05:00

Ice storm threatens Southeast; flights canceled

• Temperature dropping in Atlanta area; rain on radar
• Rain, sleet, freezing rain expected across Southeast
• Delta canceling about 200 flights to avoid passenger delays
• Airline is calling passengers to rebook flights

ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) -- A winter storm aimed its chilly sights at north Georgia, poised to deliver an icy sheen Thursday to areas north of Atlanta as cold air from the west collided with moisture from the Gulf of Mexico.

By 9 p.m., temperatures across the metro Atlanta area had dropped below freezing and were still falling. Light rain -- most of it not reaching the ground -- was observed on radar moving eastward into far western Georgia.

As of 5 a.m., the following North Carolina counties are under a severe weather warning, advisory, or watch: Alamance, Alleghany, Ashe, Carroll, Caswell, Davidson, Davie, Forsyth, Grayson, Guilford, Henry, Iredell, Montgomery, Patrick, Pittsylvania, Randolph, Rockingham, Rowan, Stokes, Surry, Watauga, Wilkes, and Yadkin.

The following county school systems are closed: Alexander (2 hr. delay), Caswell, Davidson, Davie, Guilford, Henry, Patrick, Randolph, Rockingham, Stokes, Surry, Wilkes (2 hr. delay), Winston-Salem/Forsyth, and Yadkin (2 hr. delay). 140 closings total, according to WXII-12, and that number is growing every few minutes.

One would say this reaction is hilarious, considering that the weather advisory (at least for Guilford) is saying there will be around an inch of ice and three-eighths of an inch of snow, and not a flake has yet touched the ground. The Yanks are laughing at us Southerners right now. Ahhhh! An entire inch of snow! How am I going to find my car??

But that's not the point. I have a Biology exam in six hours and I don't want to go. Come on now Chancellor Sullivan, be a pal. Make my snow day.

5:23 AM - Orange, Franklin, Chatham, Vance, Johnston, Harnett, Wake, and Granville county schools are cancelled. Durham Public schools are out too.

5:42 AM - At least 11 community colleges, including GTCC, are out. 170+ schools so far.

6:08 AM - WXII-12 SAYS UNCG IS CLOSED! What?? That never happens. And who made the smart play by staying up late checking the closing times when he should have been resting for his exam? This guy, that's who. Now I'm going to bed.

Carolinian in NYT

2007-01-31T16:52:00.000-05:00

Carolinian News Editor Kathryn Kennedy's news story on the Guilford attacks got picked up by the New York Times online edition, which is just some kind of awesome.

When this story broke last Tuesday, Kathryn and I got an email from Executive editor Chris Lowrance before any news source had an article out. Yes! broke it that night, and the N&R soon followed. Still, no college paper had anything on it, and no one was going to any time soon. Our print edition came out earlier that day, so it looked like we were doing an online update. Kathryn got out to Guilford the next day and busted her ass to get the story in that night. Occasionally hard work pays off.

Hell yes.

An Ode to Teachers

2007-01-27T07:07:00.000-05:00

I'm won over. If this whole writing thing falls through and I find myself in a teaching position - much like the main character in my favorite novel, Sideways, only hopefully minus the alcoholism and self-loathing - I don't think would be such a bad thing. We tend to look at teaching as a profession the way we do because we remember the majority of teachers who didn't care, not the ones who did and make it count.

The other day I finally found the address of my middle school English teacher, Ms. Dennis. She taught the advanced English class I was in all three years of middle school, and I trace this whole writing thing back to her. Every writing assignment or lesson in essay structure we had high school seemed beneath the level Ms. Dennis pushed us to years earlier. Middle school is the last time I remember ever struggling with writing in the technical sense.

The year after we left her class I started my first blog. Eventually I ended up here. Still blogging when I should be doing other things. Actually get paid a little bit for some of my writing.

I'm halfway through a letter to my old teacher. I've heard teachers like getting letters from past students, though I'm not sure if I'm expecting a response. The knowledge that I sent the letter is all I really want. But, if I could choose, I'd like to get my letter sent back to me "Return to Sender" style, covered in red ink marks. One last C+, another essay that could have been better. And maybe one of those scratch-n-sniff stickers that smell like grape.

Latest twists in Guilford case

2007-01-27T06:36:00.000-05:00

Joe Killian's latest report on the Guilford attack -- three Palestinian students were allegedly attacked by a number of members of the school's football team -- has a few interesting twists.

- Prosecutors are deciding what action will be taken. Either 1)"Prosecute the case based on the witness statements and the report put together by the college's public safety department," 2) "Ask the Greensboro Police Department to conduct a follow-up investigation," or 3) "Drop the charges."

- The FBI is deciding whether it will get involed.

- A father of one of the players has spoken up with an interesting take.

Tim Bates, who has distributed pictures of a bruised Michael Robert Six, said the Palestinian students started the fight. He offered a picture of Six's back with what appears to be a belt-buckle shaped bruise as the strongest evidence.

"Here's a guy who is supposedly beating someone and he has a whip mark on his back," Bates said. "It doesn't make sense. It shows you who the real aggressors were."

Not only does the story have legs, it's running its ass off. I really didn't expect the "those three kids attacked the at least five and possibly 15 football players" defense. I'm interested to see how that plays out.

One this is for sure: An unseen victim in all of this has to be Joe's cell phone, which I assume hasn't stopped ringing for several days now. At least one drink is on me tomorrow, Joe.

Anyone hear how they cured cancer?

2007-01-26T15:45:00.000-05:00

So scientists discovered that a drug already used for metabolic disorders can kill cancer cells. It's also unpatented, so it can be produced cheap and en masse. This sort of seems like the kind of thing that I should be hearing from CNN, not a friend's blog. Hurray for media.

I'm going out for some some cigarettes.

I Can't Believe I... stayed awake for 48 hours

2007-01-17T20:03:00.000-05:00

The Carolinian -- Don't let my height fool you, I'm a really just a big kid. And not in that "look how I've kept my youthful vigor" way some people mean either. I've skillfully retained a lot of those habits one should shed before adulthood. Maturing, they call it. My room is as messy as it was when I was six, I refuse to admit when I'm wrong, I still won't take medicine, and to this day I hate going to bed.

It's not that I don't love sleeping. I love it in the same way a child refuses to get in the bathtub and later is having so much fun playing they won't get out. For whatever reason, staying up late is something I've always done. But there are limits to this activity, I've found.

This bedtime story starts one Saturday after I woke from an afternoon nap. Waking up that late in the day left me no hope for getting to bed at a decent hour, so it appeared that I would be staying up all night. I had some work to do anyway, and staying up so late that no one else is awake is a great way to force yourself to do it. An all-night writing or cramming session is practically the only way I get schoolwork done, or anything for that matter.

***

The next day I found myself stuck at work longer than I'd imagined. The lack of sleep was starting to catch up with me, and by the time I could get myself out of the Carolinian office I realized I'd been awake for over a day and a half. After a short break it was right back to the office for another all-nighter because, well, I had stuff to do. I try to stay busy.

The timeline is different for each person, but I find it's around 36 hours awake that I start to hallucinate. This isn't a full-blown acid trip, mind you. I start seeing things out of the corner of my eye, for example, only to turn and find nothing. The first time I remember it happening I had to leave my room because a shadow kept creeping toward me. Little things like that. Full article

Jeff Megall: [Talking to Nick on the phone, late at night, his phone beeps] Gotta go. London. It's 7 AM in the Old Empire.
Nick Naylor: When do you sleep?
Jeff Megall: [pause] Sunday.

I don't get a lot of sleep during the semester, that should be obvious by now. Last semester, I got about 4-5 hours a night. That's a ballpark average, since I would stay up all night at least once a week and hopefully end up crashing during a day at least once as well.

It's not hard. You get used to it.

Not sleeping is a non-issue at this point. Except for that painful first half hour or so when I just woke up from three hours sleep, I don't feel tired. Part of it is being 21 and invincible, and part of it has to do with putting it out of your mind and keeping busy. I do sleep, just not on any real sort of schedule, and at this point no schedule is my schedule. It's not that hard.

Like the villain from Die Another Day said, "You only get one shot at life. Why waste it on sleep?"

I get the same reaction from a lot of people when I mention I've been awake since yesterday: "I just can't do it," as if staying up all night were some mystical feat. Maybe they tried it once and got until about 6 a.m., then it was lights out. The morning of my first all-nighter (freshman year, those were the days) my roommate woke me up by yelling at me for over a minute. And when I say "woke me up" I mean he saw me sitting upright in a chair with my eyes open, but completely out of it. Ah, the rookie year. For those that have said you can't, or are attempting your first all-nighter, here's a few tips.

Caffeine is your friend, to a point. As with any drug, know your body type and your tolerance. Sure 5 cups of coffee will keep you awake, but if you're jittery as all hell then you won't be able to focus on that textbook that seems to be shaking across your desk. Worst case scenario: Your heart starts pounding in your chest and you can't do anything except lie flat on your back and hope not to die. Been there. It sucks.

Pick your mode of caffeine well. I gave up coffee and soda. Too little caffeine, it's a waste of time. Energy drinks are an option, though not a tasty one. No Fear's diet energy drink tastes the best (get the diet because it doesn't leave that syrupy residue in your mouth), and it's a 16-ouncer, which means two servings per can. I can't seem to have more than two in a night without getting an upset stomach though.

When I do use caffeine it's just straight No-Doz, which are nothing more than 200mg caffeine tablets. No fuss, no extra stuff you don't want.

Once you're dedicated, don't quit. On an average body rhythm, the body's temperature drops between 3 and 5 a.m.. These are the hardest hours to get through, and there when you're going to want to take a tiny nap before that exam. Past the point of no return (anything less than four hours until you have to be somewhere, and four hours is pushing it for most) you are NOT going to wake up from that nap. Fight through it. Sleep after the exam, not through it.

Recover. There's a thing called "sleep debt." Rack up those waking hours and it takes a toll on your body and mind. The less sleep you get, the more you're going to have to get eventually. Building up sleep debt over time isn't bad in the same way that staying up for a long period of time is bad (you won't go insane, for instance), but it's still something you should worry about. You can't escape this; not sleeping affects everyone.

Not me though.

Failure to Communicate: Solitaire, minesweeper, and the art of looking attentive

2007-01-17T20:00:00.000-05:00

The Carolinian -- This August all fulltime freshmen entering UNCG will be required to purchase a laptop, and I fully expect professors to start complaining about it by early September. UNCG really hasn't thought through the ramifications of force-feeding new computers to thousands of freshmen.

This laptop initiative is another one of UNCG's power-trip ideas, and it's a bad one. Why? Because if you want or need a laptop and can afford a laptop, you'll buy a laptop on your own. If you don't want or need one ? you see where I'm going with this. None of that matters now, of course. UNCG made your decision for you.

It's kind of a bum deal for students who already own desktops but have to buy laptops anyway. It's not so bad, aside from the university forcing you to shell out a couple thousand on something you plainly don't need. The only possible reason for this requirement is that they want us to carry our computers to class, and therein lies our drama.

Last March June Entman, a University of Memphis law professor, banned laptops from her class, claiming students "were focusing on trying to transcribe every word that I was saying, rather than thinking and analyzing." Never have I had a professor complain that I was taking notes too well. I guess that's what Provost Edward Uprichard meant when he called the laptop initiative "technology-enhanced learning".

Be warned UNCG professors, this is about to happen to you. It's not our fault. Blame the university.

Paying too much attention is a problem, apparently, but some of us very much prefer to pay none, and our university overlords need to understand this fact right now: "Technology-enhanced learning" walks hand-in-hand with technology-enhanced goofing off. Full column

Oh yeah...

2007-01-14T11:45:00.000-05:00

I'm a writer. Did I mention that? I write things.

Faux News - Dorm mini-fridge apparently not as clean as previously thought

Cheap Eats - Look no further for the best barbecue

Failure to Communicate - Let's call an armistice in the War on Christmas

Makes me happy every time I see this

2007-01-14T03:40:00.000-05:00

Now that classes have kicked in, that sounds about right

2007-01-12T23:19:00.000-05:00

Ugh....

2007-01-08T07:34:00.000-05:00

I have been awake since 7 p.m. Saturday night. It is now 7 a.m. Monday morning.

I have been working in the Carolinian office since sometime around 5 p.m. Sunday. I repeat, it is 7 a.m. Monday morning.

My iPod just died, and the only music on this computer's iTunes is Tori Amos, The Rolling Stones, and Hanson.

There is a God, and he hates me.

New favorite actor

2007-01-07T08:14:00.000-05:00

Up at eight in the morning, watching Inside the Actor's Studio on YouTube when I should be working, I saw this exchange during the end bit when Lipton asks everyone the same series of questions. These are the best answers, or at least my favorite, I've heard yet.

Lipton: Johnny, what's your favorite word?
Depp: Why.
Lipton: ...What is your least favorite word?
Depp: No.
Lipton: What turns you on?
Depp: Breathing.
Lipton: What turns you off?
Depp: Not breathing?
Lipton: What sound or noise do you love?
Depp: My daughter's voice.
Lipton: What sound or noise do you hate?
Depp: Vacuum cleaner.
Lipton: What is your favorite curse word?
Depp: Boy, this is a real opportunity here.
Lipton: Yes it is.
Depp: I don't want to mess this up. I think the most expressive would be shit. Shit works a lot. . .
Lipton: . . . What profession other than yours would you like to attempt?
Depp: Writing, I think. Writing.
Lipton: What profession would you absolutely not like to try?
Depp: President of the United States.
Lipton: Johnny, if Heaven exists what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the pearly gates?
Depp: "Wow."

During the audience question section, a Romanian student asked Depp about a period in his past where he mentioned living with Romanian gypsies. Depp said they taught him "great lessons in life. These guys really know the definition of living, you know, and I don't mean that in terms of a constant festival or a constant party, I mean these guys live every single moment, and when James asked me what I, I think it was one of my favorite things to do or something, I don't remember, but I said "breathing." We forget what a gift every single breath is, I mean, that we're given. Every breath that we take is a great gift, and we never pay respect to that, you know. And those guys, my gypsy brethren, appreciate every single second of every day, every moment, every breath they take, every...well you know the song."

I'm sold. New favorite actor. Christopher Walken just got bumped to number two, where he's still battling Denzel Washington.

The episode starts with part one here, and parts 2-5 in the side bar.

How do you make hate crimes funny?

2007-01-02T03:00:00.000-05:00

Make "MBop" by Hanson the theme song.

Those crazy Indians

2006-12-31T15:05:00.000-05:00

After much anticipation, they finally released the names of the full moons of 2007. That's right, they name full moons. Apparently it stems from a Native American tradition, which makes me feel a little better about taking their land. Or, as they refer to it, "George." Some examples:

March 3, 6:17 p.m. EST - The Full Worm Moon
May 2, 6:09 a.m. EDT - The Full Flower Moon
June 30, 9:49 a.m. EDT - The Full Strawberry Moon
Aug. 28, 6:35 a.m. EDT - The Full Sturgeon Moon

The Sturgeon, as in the big fish. I might be laying on the couch doing nothing, but at least I'm not doing something stupid AND useless.

It's all about the remix

2006-12-30T16:49:00.000-05:00

Funniest thing I've seen all break.

Well that's nice

2006-12-29T00:52:00.000-05:00

Those nice prison guards in Iraq gave Saddamn Hussein a swing set for Christmas. How sweet of them.

Oh...he WILL be swinging. Ah. Merry Christmas to me then.

It's so...I just....sigh...

2006-12-29T00:30:00.000-05:00

The Charlotte Observer -- Robin Hayes is an heir to a textile fortune and a former GOP candidate for N.C. governor. Since 1999, he has represented part of the Charlotte area in Congress. Next up: missionary to the Middle East?

A weekly newspaper in Concord, Hayes' hometown, quoted the congressman this week as saying that stability in Iraq ultimately depends on "spreading the message of Jesus Christ, the message of peace on earth, good will towards men." Hayes was speaking to the Concord Rotary Club.

"Everything depends on everyone learning about the birth of the savior," Hayes added, according to the Concord Standard and Mount Pleasant Times.

I just wanted to use this opportunity to remind everyone that Jesus is the reason for the season. I also want to wish you all a happy New Year, which, if Hayes has his way, will be just like the past year: bloody, yet satisfying in that "God wants us to do this" kind of way.

My thoughts exactly

2006-12-22T15:00:00.000-05:00

Luke is a dissapointed atheist

2006-12-11T14:24:00.000-05:00

First, watch this video. It's hilarious. Second, that video made me realize something that I honestly cannot believe I didn't know. The Bible has unicorns in it.

Job 39:9-10 (King James Version) -- Will the unicorn be willing to serve thee, or abide by thy crib? Canst thou bind the unicorn with his band in the furrow? or will he harrow the valleys after thee?

There's no string of curse words I could put together that would express the amount of angry dissapointment I have in myself right now. Not only that, it happens in EIGHT MORE PLACES!

Numbers 23:22 (King James Version) -- God brought them out of Egypt; he hath as it were the strength of an unicorn.

Numbers 24:8 (King James Version) -- God brought him forth out of Egypt; he hath as it were the strength of an unicorn: he shall eat up the nations his enemies, and shall break their bones, and pierce them through with his arrows.

Deuteronomy 33:17 (King James Version)-- His glory is like the firstling of his bullock, and his horns are like the horns of unicorns: with them he shall push the people together to the ends of the earth: and they are the ten thousands of Ephraim, and they are the thousands of Manasseh.

Psalm 22:21 (King James Version) -- Save me from the lion's mouth: for thou hast heard me from the horns of the unicorns.

Psalm 29:6 (King James Version) -- He maketh them also to skip like a calf; Lebanon and Sirion like a young unicorn.

Psalm 92:10 (King James Version) -- But my horn shalt thou exalt like the horn of an unicorn: I shall be anointed with fresh oil.

Isaiah 34:7 (King James Version) -- And the unicorns shall come down with them, and the bullocks with the bulls; and their land shall be soaked with blood, and their dust made fat with fatness.

From an early age, I knew this religion thing wasn't for me. Except for that year-long stint where I desperately tried, and subsequently failed, to be Baptist, it just wasn't going to happen. I ask too many questions and I take too much pleasure in proving things wrong. I remember at 10 years old asking my preacher uncle why there were no dinosaurs mentioned in the Bible and getting an answer back that didn't even satisfy a 10-year-old.

But, at no point did I ever stand up on my pew on Sunday and yell to the congregation "DO YOU PEOPLE REALIZE THERE ARE UNICORNS IN THIS GODDAMN THING?!?" How could I not have noticed? How does no one notice this? I can only assume that people routinely skip over these passages. If not...my god. There aren't words.

If you're flipping through your holy book, and you see a mention of "unicorns," how does your faith not shatter around you? You do a double take, you ask your neighbor if he sees the same thing you do, and then you realize you're worshipping something that isn't there. That has to be how it works. It has to be. Because before today there was only one thing I knew of that actually mentioned unicorns. Fairy tales.

People worry me

2006-12-10T13:27:00.000-05:00

ANDREWS- Nathan Vogler is your typical 15-year-old boy, his mom likes to say.

The only difference is that when his friends are learning Spanish, he's learning Braille. And while they're taking driver's education, he has to sit out.

Vogler, of Andrews, started losing his eyesight when he was 5. Now, with no color or peripheral vision and very little tunnel vision, he is legally blind.

But his lack of vision doesn't slow him down, he says. And in mid-November, he went on a special hunting trip with the Pisgah chapter of the National Wild Turkey Federation, part of a national initiative to take disabled hunters into the woods.

Full article

While North Carolinians are making it illegal to ride a lawn mower while drunk we should have made another new law: if you're blind, you don't get a gun. People with perfect vision miss shots all the time. Sending a blind kid into the woods with a gun is like a deadly game of pinata. You remember the kid that would pretend to not know where the board was in "Pin the Tail on the Donkey," and he'd kind of stagger around with his pin and scare the other kids? Well imagine he actually didn't know, and imagine he had a sword. Or better yet, he had something that shot swords at you. Like a gun.

How does it work? The kid points his shotgun in a random direction for three hours, waits patiently for a deer to come into his sights, and then his dad shouts "NOW!" It's the only way I can possibly imagine that playing out. How is it fun for the kid? Let's say he actually takes a shot, and let's just assume that, for whatever reason, he doesn't get within a mile of his target. Wouldn't a good father just lie to him?

"Good shot Billy, hit it right in the face."
"I hear screaming dad."
"Give me the rifle son."

And if a father could do that, why not just dress the kid up in camoflauge (or something that feels like camoflauge, doesn't really matter), drive around for an hour, pull into the backyard and have him hunt there. Give him blanks and let him pop a few rounds off at the neighbor's kids. Your son has fun, no one gets shot because he thought they were a deer, and those kids stay out of your yard from now on. Everybody wins.

I wish it would snow

2006-12-08T16:25:00.000-05:00

From Joey Comeau's blog -- It snowed. I don't have any snow boots. With snow boots, you can't run and slide in the slush. I like to run as fast as I can and slide on my feet. I like to see cars spin and crumple against lamp posts. I hope nobody gets hurt. I hope nobody ever gets hurt. Everybody's going to die anyway. I like to watch metal crumple and I like to see it after it has. I've been in car accidents in the snow. You spin and spin and crunch - you hit. Afterwards, you're glad to be alive. The cost doesn't matter, not in those few wonderful moments. You're glad to be alive, and if there was a man taking money and selling tickets, you would go again and again.

EDIT: Great new comic at A Softer World.

These are the kind of entries that blogs are made for. Short thoughts, tiny little essays that couldn't belong anywhere else. It's one of the things I like about blogging, but more one of the things I like about reading other people's blogs. The story the above entry reminded me of was going to be one of those short thoughts. Instead it spun into a much longer yarn, and it's going in the novel. That's another thing I like about blogging. It gives me another excuse to write. And sometimes with writing, you never know what's going to happen.

Short aside: So NaNoWriMo came and went, and I'm left without a complete novel. I did start, but didn't come close to finishing on time. Writing a novel right before exams was a masochistic goal anyway.

Time management, or the simple lack of time, isn't the reason I stopped. It's the reason I would have failed anyway, but I stopped sometime in mid-November much before the actual deadline. A very odd moment came up during an argument between two of my characters that I can't fully explain without giving away the story (don't you just hate that). In a fury of typing, one person asked my main character a question about himself for which I had no answer. My mind drew a blank; I had nothing. I saved my Word file and closed my laptop, and I haven't looked at it since.

I've never written fiction to that degree, and it was some of the most fun I've had writing. The novel will be completed in some form.

Should we go with with a comparison to Vietnam, or something more Orwellian?

2006-12-07T14:42:00.000-05:00

Scary: WASHINGTON - U.S. military and intelligence officials have systematically underreported the violence in Iraq in order to suit the Bush administration's policy goals, the bipartisan Iraq Study Group said.

Scarier: The panel pointed to one day last July when U.S. officials reported 93 attacks or significant acts of violence. "Yet a careful review of the reports for that single day brought to light 1,100 acts of violence," it said.

Scariest: Bush continues to deny Iraq is in civil war.

Last Carolinian of the semester

2006-12-05T03:42:00.000-05:00

Hat trick for me in this week's Carolinian, the final issue of the semester. It's also the last one with Kitty Campbell as Managing editor. Kitty, whose column this week you should read, is moving head on into the real world, a move I plan on never making. She'll be fine; Kitty seems to have that whole "responsibility" thing down pretty well.

I'm taking over as Managing editor, at least for the mean time. I'm staying on as Life editor as well, so we'll see how that works out at the beginning of next semester. Luke will be a busy little bastard.

Tomorrow at our last editorial board meeting I'm sure there will be goodbyes to be said, though no one is actually leaving. So maybe no goodbyes are neccesary. BUT, there will be drinks. I promise you that. Anyway, my stories for the week:

AIDS weeks hits home for black community
The crowd in the EUC Auditorium Wednesday was lively and responsive, until Jason Robertson dropped a bombshell.

"One in 250 people in the United States have HIV. One in three people who have it don't know it."

The crowd's sudden silence revealed how serious the issue being discussed was: AIDS in the black community. As part of World AIDS Week, which culminated on Dec. 1 with World AIDS Day, the Wellness Center and the National Pan-Hellenic Council co-sponsored a presentation on HIV and AIDS awareness, emphasizing the diseases' outbreak in the black community in past years. The presentation was given by Robertson, Wellness Coordinator for the Wellness Center at UNCG.

"[AIDS] went from a gay, white male disease in the 1980s," said Robertson, "to something more affecting the African-American community.

"African-Americans make up 13 percent of the population, but they're 48 percent of the AIDS population."Full article

Failure to Communicate: Laugh at Borat? Congratulations, you're racist
Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan is the first movie in a while that had me in tears laughing. It has constant jokes, very few dull moments, and the one gross scene everyone warns you about isn't really that bad. But there's something many viewers may have missed while watching. I hate to break it to you, but if you're like me and laughed hysterically at "Borat," you're racist. Full column

WEB JUNKIE: What your dad didn't tell you, and your mom doesn't want to know
Male advice websites answer the questions that guys hate asking

In a young man's life, advice about life often comes along like pornography. You find a bit here and there: a Playboy in the garage, a video in your older brother's closet, the sudden discovery of what happens late night on Cinemax. Most male conversation is restricted to sports and cars. Talking about our emotions is about as welcome as farting at Thanksgiving dinner - which, if we men had our way, would be not only welcome but expected - so rarely does it happen that one of our dads sat us down and told us everything we need to know.

It just so happens that the Internet has given men two of those very things we spent our youths looking for. The porn you can find on your own, but the talking-to your father never gave you comes in the form of male advice websites. Full article

PSA for Jacksonville residents

2006-12-02T13:05:00.000-05:00

CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- You need to know about several state laws that take effect today in North Carolina.

Teenage drivers can no longer talk on a cell phone behind the wheel. The law effects teens under the age of 18. There are a few exceptions to the law. Teens will be able to use their cell phone for an emergency or to call their parents or guardians.

A second new law going into effect today, helps state law enforcement agents track violent sexual predators. Beginning today, agents will use new GPS devices to track habitual and violent sex offenders. Its a lifelong tracking system for offenders.

A new seatbelt law now requires passengers in the back seat of a vehicle to wear a seatbelt. Until now, only people in the front seats and children under 16 had to buckle up. Troopers will hand out warnings beginning today.

Finally, it's now against to law to drive or operate a bicycle or lawn mower if you are legally drunk.

The last one kind of cuts into our Christmas activites back home. The biking, that is. Not so much with the mowing. What can I say? Jacksonville is a boring place.

Also, the government has no reason or right to require people in the backseat to wear a seatbelt. My libertarian rage almost makes me want to stop wearing them in the backseat on principle. Almost, because I also don't want to die just yet.

Painful strife of a sandwich eater

2006-11-30T23:44:00.000-05:00

GO TRIAD -- The Reuben sandwich is not for everybody. Most things with sauerkraut are like that.

However, there is a right way and a wrong way to make a Reuben. During the summer I worked at a deli, where my manager, a Chicago native of Polish descent, introduced me to the right way: big and messy. The sandwich should consist of mounds of sauerkraut atop a steaming hot pile of corned beef, literally smothered in Swiss cheese and Thousand Island dressing. The wrong way is anything else.

That deli, Cloud Nine Cafe, is the only place in Greensboro I've been able to find a decent Reuben.

Thus, I began my search for another suitable eatery in town that could measure up.

Full column here

I got a lot of email about this column today. Most people were suggesting tiny little hole-in-the-wall places around the Triad where I could find a decent Reuben; a few were just happy with the column; and only one was unpleased, but he was unpleased in the way that makes putting my mugshot next to the column a questionable move.

But then there was this email, which is the best letter I've ever gotten.

From: "xxxxxxxxxxxx"
To: triadcheapeats@yahoo.com
Subject: Thank goodness someone has finally brought our plight out into the public

Luke,

I remember my first Reuben sandwich as if it were yesterday. My parents had taken my sister and I to a new restaurant in Florida called "Bennigans". My family being of the "Southern Baptist" persuasion rarely ate in places that served beer, and never took the kids to such sin holes, but we were eating out with another new family, and they chose.
I saw Reuben on the menu. I had never had corned beef, and didn't like Rye bread, but I was in a fancy place, I was going to eat a sophisticated sandwich. There are three magical moments in my life. My son was born, my wedding, and that sandwich.

Long story short, I made it a habit to order a Reuben everywhere I went. The last few times I ordered one in Greensboro, I got one fried lump of meat that all came out on the first bite, leaving you to scarf down a scalding hot, rubbery bit of pink flesh like a dog eating scraps, and then lingering over lonely rye and Sauerkraut.
Since then if I get bad Reuben vibes, I go for my second option "The
Cuban". (A buddy worked at a Cuban sammich shop in FL. They had like three things on the menu. There was always a line. The owner drove to Ybor city every day for fresh Cuban bread, Guava pastries, and we suspect weed.)

Please let me know if you find a good Reuben. I mostly go to Ham's, and like most things at Ham's, it is hit or miss. Right now my fave in town is the Cuban sandwich roll at Roly Poly.

You are an inspiration to all of us.

Yours,
Xxxxxxx Xxxxxx

P.S. May Jared the Subway guy rot in hell.

Best. Email. Ever. Aside from inflating my ego, three things I liked here:
1. He shares my almost excessive love of the Reuben.
2. He said "sammich."
2. Screw Jared and everyone who looks like Jared.

An actual self-interest quiz

2006-11-29T00:53:00.000-05:00

I've always hated those little self-interest quizzes that people often post on their blogs. They're full of meaningless questions like "If I could be anywhere now, you would be:________" or "If my daddy had hugged me as a kid, I wouldn't have:_______". (Most common answers to those are, respectively, "hanging from the ceiling" and "become a stripper.") But, since this particular issue seems to be in debate between some of my friends, I will take this quiz.

ARE YOU AN ALCOHOLIC?

1. In the last month, have you taken a drink first thing in the morning to help recover from a hangover (hair of the dog that bit you)?
No. That's disgusting.

2. In the last year, have you had a drink while driving or have you driven while under the influence of alcohol, even just a couple drinks?
I fail to see how restricting yourself to two beers if driving is a sign of alcoholism and not of responsible drinking, but I'll play along: Yes.

3. In the last 3 months, have you continued drinking until you passed out?
How else would you know how to stop?

4. Are more than 50% of your friends drinkers?
All friends, no. Close friends, yes.

5. Do you consume more than 7 alcoholic beverages a week?
Week? Day? The answer is yes.

6. In the last 3 months, have you taken alcohol to work to drink during your workday or chosen a lunch restaurant because it serves alcohol?
I have to blame this one on a flexible sleep schedule, so quite often my "lunch" is at other people's supper time. But the answer is yes, I've said the words "Let's go somewhere else, they don't serve beer there."

7. Do you hide your drinking from any friends or family?
My parents are well aware of my drinking now, so no.

8. Have you failed to keep a promise to yourself or a loved one that you would quit drinking?
I would never do something stupid like breaking a promise, or promise not to drink.

9. Have you ever had trouble remembering what happened while you were drinking?
Yep.

10. In the last year, have you done anything while drinking that you regret doing?
I've done very stupid things I should not have, but I also never regret anything, ever. Answer is no.

11. Do you find it difficult to stop after one or two drinks?
No.

12. In the last year, have you wet the bed or wet your pants during or after drinking?
I've never understood how a person could get that drunk. No.

13. Have you ever woken up after drinking in a strange place, or at home, but you don't remember how you got there?
Yeah, but it's usually a simple matter of finding out who drove my drunken ass home.

So my total number of yes's is seven. According to the test, a single "yes" means you should investigate further and monitor yourself for three months. I'm not joking.

Three yes's means you "may be" an alcoholic. You should have a non drinking friend take you to an AA meeting, and then talk to your family about your drinking. Of course, "if you're unwilling or unable to do these things, you are an alcoholic." It's not that this test is stupid, or its recommendations are silly. You're an addict.

I answered "yes" to five or more, so I'm "probably" an alcoholic. I'll admit that my answers are probably skewed because I'm in college, have always been a heavy drinker, and have very few responsibilities that drinking would affect (e.g. an actual job, children, etc.).

The actual test for alcoholism, or any addiction, is whether it negatively affects your life and you keep doing it. Drinking isn't hurting anything so far, aside from the occasional hangover and taking up a portion of my paycheck. And then there's the inevitable cirrhosis of the liver. Either way, listening to stupid tests like this would most certainly affect my life in a more negative way.