bourbon praline cake

watched a couple movies recently.

"Import, Export" -- really good. kind of a bummer, but really well done.

"Big River Man" -- reminded me of apocalypse now. absolutely epic. i thought it was a mockumentary at first. absolute madness. superb editing.

"Bald" -- ridiculous. somehow entertaining. i'm glad i'm blessed with a full head of hair.

i've taken it easy big time this weekend. i needed it. sleeping 8 hours! woooooo. it feels good. tomorrow hopefully i can be relatively productive. happy president's day! yeeeehaw!

i watched most of nba all star weekend. WEAK SAUCE. DUNK CONTEST WAS WEAK SAUCE. WHAT THE HELL. COME ON. i get amped for this weekend but dunk contest was turrrrrrible.

rookie sophomore game was cool. paul pierce winning the 3 point contest was cool. that was about it. dunks in the all star game are cool too.

there's another basketball court up the street from my house that i'm looking forward to playing at maybe in april? only one of the hoops had a net tho. i gotta locate all the courts in the area.

i was talking with my friend today and he said he's sick of winter. i don't think i'm there, but i am looking forward to hanging outside more come springtime. looks like i'm finally going skiing in vermont this coming weekend, which will be nice. it'll be good to get away.

i've been watching a bunch of olympics. i saw Hannah Kearney from Norwich VT win the gold! stole it from the canadians! i think it's incredible. there are like 3500 people in Norwich. i think the police cruiser drove by my place once during the half year i lived there. congratulations Hannah!

saw the short track speed skating last night which was a crazy finish. also saw the cross country skiing today which was awesome.

wow there are too many sports. america's cup is over. good guys won! hopefully i'll get to watch some of it. i gotta find out if it's gonna be on tv. watching it on the computer isn't the same and doesn't do justice.

ok enough sports. i gotta be more prolific here! PROLIFIC. p for prose. r for reading-worthy. o for original. i for intelligent. f for free-writing. i for incisive. and c for creative! that's right. getting myself psyched up about writing.

oh yeah Valentine's day today, errr yesterday. went to brunch at the vegetarian/vegan place with family. got eggs florentine. eggs were real but the bacon wasn't. i almost asked if i could substitute turkey bacon for the soy bacon.

oh yeah my mom got me a mixer. amazing! and i used it the first day i had it!

i made bourbon praline cake. the recipe's online! Bourbon Praline Cake Recipe : Food Network Kitchens : Food Network

it was epic. not sure if it was the hardest thing i've ever made, but it wasn't easy. but it actually came out great! it was sooo good. i made it at chris's. he had makers mark and i used that (but i would have rather just used 80 proof bourbon). i didn't have kosher salt but i did have fine salt. i also didn't have a springform pan so i just used a cake pan and it came out fine. buttering and positioning the parchment paper was a little awkward but it worked out.

i didn't take a photo of the finished product but it was delicious. very heavy on the toasted pecans and the praline layer was fantastic. one of the best things i've ever made! i'm feelin pretty confident in the kitchen now after that showing. i'm gonna keep on steppin my game up. maybe i'll make somethin tomorrow! this is like my new thing. weird.

chris made pulled chicken in the slow cooker and he also made cole slaw and those were both fantastic of course. i'm sooo lucky that chris cooks a bunch. he's my inspiration! good times. i gotta eat healthy tho, been in feast mode too much haha.

here's a photo of the dessert as well as the flyer from that slooowed down music night i went to a little while back. i'm listening to a really good c+s mixtape right now.

ok yall bye.

top tens of 2009

did these for 2008. thought i'd do them for 2009 too.

please don't trust these lists. they are simply meant to serve as "highlight" lists of a good year in music. album art is below. -D


Top Ten Albums

Slim Thug – Boss of All Bosses
Jay-Z – The Blueprint 3
Mount Kimbie – Sketch On Glass
Juelz Santana – The Splash Effect
Drake – Born Successful 2
Martyn – Great Lengths
Passion Pit – Manners
Nadsroic – Room Mist
Drake – So Far Gone
KiD CuDi - Man On The Moon: The End Of Day


Top Ten Artists

Drake
Jay–Z
Gucci Mane
Starkey
Mount Kimbie
DJ Michael “5000” Watts
DJ/rupture
Passion Pit
James Blackshaw
KiD CuDi

the America's Cup

aright folks here it is, the best post of the year! aright maybe not, but these are some of the best photos i've seen in a bit, and the sheer massiveness of these sailboats is awe-inspiring.

here's the original nytimes post with the content in question:
America’s Cup Rivals Race With the Wind at Their Wings - NYTimes.com

hmmmmm i love it -- "Thirty Knots, With the Wind at Your Wings". as we all know, idratherbesailing. or, i'dratherbesailing. either way, i'd rather be sailing.

i was actually considering a trip where i went somewhere with the intention of doing some sailing, because i haven't done any in a long time. but that's beside the point.

can you believe these America's Cup boats? these photos are epic in an undescribable way. i would pay to see these boats in person. they're absurd.

the article blew me away. currently, the start of the race has been postponed off the coast of Valencia twice. it was postponed the first time because there wasn't enough wind. it was postponed the second time because there were 4-6 foot waves (the race officials don't want the masts to break, which has happened before).

i'm completely enthralled now, lemme go see if there are any ways we can monitor this incredible race. -Dave

An Unintelligible Blurt

here's the most recent one. i'm averaging about one random spam comment on one random post a day now. i've been hit!

An Unintelligible Blurt

by "Anonymous"

"sunita antibody rescheduled lifont control illiteracy orgto stephen additionally spiral citys lolikneri havaqatsu"

blogger so dear

i think blogger so dear is the name of a wake forest college sports blog. i like the name though. i read a couple posts every year by "blogger so dear" whenever bc plays them.

ya know what? i'll give you the link. i got nothin against wake, so why not?
Blogger So Dear - The Wake Forest blog where Charlie Brown is still trying to kick that football...

soooo it was supposed to snow today. where's all the snow? wasn't snowing when i woke up. come on snow? that's the best you got?

i guess it snowed like 18 feet in philly and dc tho. let's just hope i don't have too much trouble driving around.

oh yeah, we won our first basketball game last night. i started, scored zero points, but hassled their big man and stayed upbeat and tried to be a team player. i hit the floor for a loose ball and banged up my knee, but it was so worth it.

the truth sinks in -- this is the first competitive sporting event of any importance that i've won in 4-5 years. wow! that's a long time. now i really wanna win all of the games!

soon i'm gonna be playin like MJ...or Doc!

ps -- ok that was kind of a lame post but i swear my next one's gonna be cool and will contain IMPRESSIVE items :)

what that sound like

soooo i've been listening to a drake mixtape all week, namely "Welcome 2 The Future" courtesy of dj white owl. below is the album art for your reference.

i'm memorizing songs and stuff. it's bordering on obsession at this point. i need to take a break and listen to some other stuff. moving on.

it's been kind of a crazy week. actually i've had a lot of crazy weeks recently, so it's not anything too new. but i better get used to it because i have several more coming.

tomorrow is the super bowl. what's the best part of super bowl weekend? that's right, the super bowl party! as in get together with some good friends and whoever's house that has the biggest tv, eat a bunch of food, and talk about how lame the commercials are. what could be better?!

i'm planning on making a corn and tomato salsa, as well as a garlicky white bean dip. i'm excited for both of them, i think i'm gonna make em today and just hold onto them til tmrw. actually now i'm not so sure that that's gonna happen, i might just end up scrambling and make them tmrw.

oh yeah i played in my first men's league basketball game this week. it was so much fun! i had a blast. i only scored 4 points and missed a bunch of shots, but it was the first time i had played full court ball in an indoor gym in a verrrry long time. the game came down to the wire and we lost a heartbreaker, but we did come back from 8 points down in the last 90 seconds. great game.

i'm really excited for the rest of them and it's going to motivate me to go to the gym a lot and get in shape and stuff. i'm gonna try to play every week too! exciting...

i didn't sleep in too late today, got up a decent time, it's always good to get an earlyish start on the day! i finished the book i had been reading ("summertime" by j.m. coetzee) and read the first couple pages of "anathem" by neal stephenson. however, anathem is almost 1000 pages, and i'm not sure i can commit to it. it would take a couple months and his last three books have been disappointing. having said that, every review of the book is very positive. still, a daunting challenge.

bye, Dave

Spotlight

spotlight ain't nothing without you!

wow it's been at least 10 days since i posted. simply unforgiveable. but hey, at least i'm alive and kicking.

let's see. it's been a good 10 days, i can tell you that much! it got majorly cold at some point, but i still have all my fingers and toes with me. i still haven't been skiing, looks like that's finally gonna happen on feb 13 or 14 which im excited for.

celtics have been losing a ton of games, bc basketball is slumping, so nothing too much to report there. i watched the nfl playoff games and those were pretty good.

my challenge in life right now is time management. anyone got any good ideas on it out there? it's a tough thing to balance.

i've been slacking on staying in touch with a couple people, and i promise i will get in touch with you this week.

some impressive things that i've recently witnessed -- a night of sloooowed down music at enormous room (i'll put up the photos later), a last minute party in belmertown (boy the front of that house really needs to be redone), a night out at Rendezvous with complimentary niceties courtesy of sous chef Ben (can't wait to go back), and a brief encounter with the sound system at phoenix landing (serious thump and oomph).

here are some new places to eat in the area. i haven't been to any of these (shame) but maybe one of ya'll wanna go there with me? or lemme know how it is if you try it out.

a couple of these places are kinda fancy, but they're newish and so they're just going on the list of places to eventually give a shot. here we go:

Zing Pizza - interesting. i don't get to porter very often but this might have to a destination, maybe for a saturday.

Tupelo - Comfort Food with a Southern Drawl - probably not gonna check out this place for a while. the place that used to be in this building never got on my good side.

Ten Tables - now in cambridge! i never went to the one in jp but maybe someday i'll check out this one.

Pescatore - seafood place in somerville. is seafood my favorite food? possibly, i need to eat more good fiiiish.

Verrill Farm - Concord, MA - this one's super close by and i just know that if i showed up i'd find a thing or two that i would really enjoy.

The Friendly Toast - i really wanna go here, the place looks insanely packed on the weekends for breakfast tho so i'm gonna have to find another time

yummmm. hungry yet? ok i'll be in touch. -D

here's an intense photo for you. hard to believe that this is even real. this guy's a serious fan and alum!

aright

heyyyyy yall whats up. i'm doing alright. Scott Brown happened this week. we watched the poll results come in while eating moose burgers. seriously.

ground moose is really good. we enjoyed the moose burgers. they were good. i ate two that night and then ate two the next day.

i'm dropping the ball on blogging.

ok i gotta get some momentum.

i still haven't seen avatar yet. "DAVE COME ON DUDE JUST GO SEE AVATAR IT'S PLAYING RIGHT AT THE MALL YOU CAN GO SEE IT ANY NIGHT YOU WANT WHAT'S THE BIG DEAL"

well look conscience -- it's not as easy as all that. going to see avatar requires a certain toolset that i just don't have right now. look at everything that it takes to see avatar:

you have to

1. drive to the movie theater
2. buy a movie ticket
3. buy a drink because you didn't smuggle in a water bottle
4. buy a popcorn because you might as well cause you're already getting this stupid overpriced sprite
5. pick a good aisle that's close to the screen but not TOO close. this one? eh let's try the one behind.
6. sit through the commercials before the previews. evilllll.
7. watch AN ENTIRE ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTY-TWO MINUTE MOVIE WITHOUT GETTING UP from your seat because you'll miss something

you see? that's a lot. i just haven't had it in me. (having said that, if you wanna go see it, i'll go see it with you, just lemme know, i'll rally). maybe i'll go this weekend?

yo i gotta get us some links. hold up.

ok. there's a rare johnny depp movie playing monday night at the brattle that i'm planning on seeing -- Arizona Dream (1993). cool, right? i def gotta go see it.

yo i also got a brief update -- i made it three days a week this week getting to sleep on time. can you believe it? THREE whole days. impressive stuff. i then blew it last night by watching "Chopped" on food network for an hour instead of crashing.

aright one more link, let's see, let's see...eh i can't come up with anything good right now, i'll work on it.

well, i hope that your 2010 is going well. my 2010 is going pretty well.

ok i really gotta go to sleep. gnight.

dont get caught in the matrix! you will only think in binary and see in neon green.

the photography of Geordie Wood

go look at more photos at Geordie Wood Photography. really incredible stuff.

here's a recent article about his work -- Geordie Wood Finds His Way | Mamiya Blog





all photos ©Geordie Wood

sitting backwards in bed

that's what's up, what it is, what it do.

forgotten melodies of indecipherable songs.

fragmented visions of bridge gnomes.

cemented in a custard bowl.

whoa.

Whatever happens happens

by Rena J. Mosteirin

Dec. 9, 2009

A poem for Dave made from davesplat:

Whatever happens happens

A lone basketball hoop in rural Alaska,
plant it / clove by clove / in November,
I brought a pumpkin pie but there was already a pumpkin pie,
I added some hot banana peppers
and he played some sample tape from this collection.
I sat in my awesome crazy creeks and cheered.
Now it’s really late and my ears are ringing. Thinking about
new ways to winterize / in my own little triangle,
performing research on crickets
boiling them in bbq sauce
the score got a little out of control
he showed up and proclaimed
whooooooooooo’s comin with me?

blogger rested

(i'm paying homage to John Updike here...rabbit at rest etc)

well it looks like i took a week off there. a good week of rest. had to reflect on the best of 2009 right? ehhhh maybe not, but i just kinda let the week fly by with no blogging. whoosh!

well, it's super late now and i should be going to sleep, but i thought that blogging needed to be done.

tomorrow i'm getting a carwash. i've wanted a carwash for a while now. my car is so salty and nasty. it's literally covered in like 4 snowstorms worth of salt. grossness. gonna feel so good to get it washed off.

then jeff and i are going to the harvard dartmouth basketball game. let's go green! so long as i live in boston i will go to the harvard dartmouth football game every other year, the harvard dartmouth basketball game every year, consider going to the dartmouth harvard hockey game but end up skipping it, and will most likely not realize that there is a dartmouth harvard baseball game going on.

i'll also likely be sleeping when harvard races dartmouth crew every spring. the year that dartmouth won (in 2006) i was soundly asleep. whooooops.

ok enough ivy league athletics talk, my goodness.

quick aside -- gilbert arenas. you're a bonehead. not sure how to feel about the whole situation, it's just bad all around.

oh yeah it's nfl playoff weekend. let's go pats!

ummm what else. it's been cold, but sunny, which is cool. i've watched a couple episdoes of deep sea salvage, which is a cool show. the celtics lost tonight but i didnt watch it cause i had other stuff going on thankfully.

ok well that's some good rambling i'll blog more and actually write something more interesting this weekend. i have a really good coetzee quote which i'm gonna put up. and Rena's poem, i promise.

in the photo below you will see a giant whoopie pie. it's the largest whoopie pie i have ever seen, or will ever see. i don't remember where it was from in maine, and there was a really funny website that went along with it, maybe i'll try to dig it up.

blogger on rest

taking a lil break here we'll be back momentarily (tmrw?)

ok fine ill write a lil bit but then i gotta go to sleep.

first of all i gotta get it off my chest -- bc basketball lost to maine yesterday. it's going to be very, very hard now for the team to make it to the ncaa tournament. simply devastating. i watched it online and i can't really bear to talk about it, so i'm not going to be writing ANYTHING bc for a while, unless they start winning like every conference game, which isn't looking so good at this point.

i am considering lifting my moratorium on not reading thedartmouth.com. the ban could be lifted this week (but will be reinstated if i read more negative news articles).

oh by the way HAPPY NEW YEAR! it's a new year! and a new decade! can you believe it? pretty nuts.

oh yeah and yesterday i made jerk scallops, jamaican cole slaw, and jamaican corn pone. it was major. i'm gettin pretty good at this cookin and bakin stuff.

here's a cool photo. i should really do my songs/bands/albums of 09, but it's gonna take a lil thought.

ps -- i watched inglourious basterds and loved it. good movie.

cowdog

hey i gotta write some more but right now i just gotta get a couple links out there (and i gotta put the poem up, procrastination ughhh...)

first, here's an article about just that, procrastination! something that we all know well. i feel that a lot of people i know would call themselves procrastinators, but i really think it's a universal thing. and can you blame us? we all have enough things to worry about.

anyway, this article is about putting off pleasurable things. it makes me wanna visit local landmarks and use the couple gift certificates in my wallet.

Findings - The Psychology Behind Putting Off What Can Be Enjoyed Now

now here's a bumout of an op ed also from nytimes. it starts with the premise that we (the world!) never bothered to name this decade. can you believe it? on december 31st, 1999, noone knew what we were gonna call the decade ahead of us. all people cared about was that y2k was gonna break every computer and the sky would come crashing down.

now it's almost december 31, 2009, and we have no idea what to call the past ten years. TEN YEARS! we've had a while to think about it but never came up with something intelligent and acceptable. heck, we could have come up with something unintelligent and it probably would have stuck. now, as much as ever, we have way too many things to worry about to care what our grandchildren will call this past decade.

this article is about how this decade did not create jobs and how this decade did not make peoples houses more valuable.

The Big Zero

i like this photo just cause of that guy's beard. that's some beard!

o ya o ya

bc lost. it's cool tho. good season, lotsa fun.

celtics lost. bad loss. rondo missed free throws. baron davis dominating our scene.

holidays still going on. still having fun.

here's a cool link and a photo of the big swimming pool on the top of Titan

NASA reveals first-ever photo of liquid on another world - CNN.com

i'll write more luego. hasta pronto.

game day

"Though some may question how motivated USC will be to play in a non-Bowl Championship Series game for the first time in eight years, there is no mistaking Boston College's intensity. There were fights during practice."

EMERALD BOWL / A matchup that sparkles

im pretty excited to watch this game. t minus 9 hours. i'm gonna make jerk chicken again. i got a food processor for xmas so im gonna go to whole foods and hopefully buy some REAL habanero or scotch bonnet peppers and make some legit fiery jerk rub.

let's go eagles! beat the trojans!

christmas day 2009

and i am still not capitalizing words.

i'm typing on the keyboard of my parents computer. i am not used to it, and my long arms and large hands and dry cracked fingers are awkwardly placed.

i just read 60 pages or so of the new j.m. coetzee novel "summertime". it's very metafiction. i wrote a long, confusing paper on coetzee's book "in the heart of the country" and how it was metafiction and how it jived with another story called "in the heart of the heart of the country", not by coetzee. i used too many quotations.

at one point i remember being in the river ranch in vermont and having countless books and printouts surrounding me in the living room and my bedroom. i began the paper by typing up the quotes in a word doc that i wanted to use in the paper. it was a lot of work. i distinctly remember barely leaving the house for a week. this was during the winter of 2005.

now, i continue to read coetzee. this book is fiction, but it is simultaneously a biography, and also i believe metafiction. of course coetzee would not offer something as conventional as an autobiography. this book is very, very good. buy a copy if you enjoy reading about dreary south african settings and details of relationships.

i may have uploaded this photo before, but at least it contains water.

merry christmas!

merry christmas everyone! it's a white christmas and there is plenty of good cheer. i had a fantastic birthday and i am so grateful to everyone. thank you so much.

wow

wow i'm almost the tiredest i've ever been but i just had two epic nights in a row and feelin pretty good. ill recap everything soon.

i also have a christmas card poem to post. stay tuned.

omg merry christmas.

of forked flashes

sweltering mangrove forests of emerald tree trunk.

contrasting shadows obscuring reflective screens.

swirling yellow plumes of liquid dyed smoke.

two toned astral planes of two dimensional audio grids.

white mountain cliffs sliding off of bobbing glaciers.

finger digits spidery retreating and advancing.

snow crystals of cloud drip luminescence.

SAY SOMETHING

SAY SOMETHING BY DRAKE WITH THE TIMBALAND BEAT IS CURRENTLY THE SONG THAT I CAN'T STOP LISTENING TO

REWIND, REWIND, REWIND

the new mixtape "Drake Born Successful 2 (Re-Loaded Edition)" is FIRE. that boy drake is droppin HITS! do i sound like a dj on jamn 94.5? oh well. i'm lovin this stuff. tapemasters INC.

oh yeah ps did i mention that i've started listening to the hot 97, a lot? in case you didnt know, 97.7 used to be the only decent hip hop station in boston, but then WAAF took it over. now, i used to be a fan of WAAF, but now i am a way bigger fan of hip hop, dancehall, rnb etc.

so yeah. i heard through kane that alex had said that there was some guy broadcasting a pirate radio station from the blue hills. the blue hills are what the name Massachusetts comes from ("at or about the great hill". have i ever mentioned that before?). so i poke around on the radio dial and then i found the NEW hot 97.

87.7FM. or 87.8FM, depending on whether you're in your car or at home.

here's the link. prepare to be a little overwhelmed. i think you can listen online though -- Hot 97 Boston WPOT

i listen to it a lot. it's good times. no ads, just promos and stuff. so yeah, doesnt sound like theyre making any money off it. but it's THE hot 97, even though its really 87.

so yeah my guess why the authorities arent shutting it down is because they arent making any money off it and because they do community building stuff and play public service messages and that kinda stuff. so good for them! the volunteers and everyone making it happen because a lot of ppl are listening to them.

good times. thanks for the comments everyone, you get me amped.

SO much snow outside. i'll post some more.

hugs, Dave

what's up

what's up folks how's it going. the storm is here. it's cold and windy outside. i'm warm and comfy inside, thankfully. i think my christmas shopping is almost done! what a relief. i've only gotten stuff for mom, dad, brother, and the kid i picked from the giving tree, but i'm still feeling pretty good about it. i went to the new balance store and tj maxx today and i think im pretty much done. those stops combined with an online order to fogdog.com have me in pretty good shape. i might just pick up one or two random more things but other than that im done! yayyyy.

i hear it's cold and snowy in many places. craaaazy out there. i went out last night with some folks, hit up cask n flagon and tequila rain lol, good times. very late night but it was fun. slept in today, i was gonna go to the apple store cause my screen is messed up, but im hoping that it goes away. ugh, stupid lcd screens

yup im just listening to a little dubstep.fm, gotta try to go to bed here in the next hour. let's see, the other day i watched the movie "the bad lieutenant: port of call new orleans" with nicolas cage directed by werner herzog. pretty ridiculous. good times.

oya and umass beat bc. it was awesome. i watched with rob b. then we played call of duty 2 obviously.

aright ill cya

whoa

whoaaaaa

yess

hey hows it goin.

here's a link

Scientists spot nearby 'super-Earth'

crazy! except if it's 40 light years away, we gotta get ourselves some hyperdrive technology or something. cause i ain't sitting in a spaceship for 40 years, i'll tell ya that much!

yo

yo how's it going i gotta go to sleep

but i went to the gym today. massive success. first time in a while. did cardio, weights, jumping exercises. huge play outta me.

gotta start holiday shopping soon. store lines intimidate me. TARGET intimidates me.

i gotta get a carwash. i cant really do much creative right now, i just wanted to keep the blogging ball rolling. looks like it's gonna be cold the next couple of days. oh boy! shouldn't be too bad tho. i'm used to it by now.

i wanna go skiing but it's probably gonna have to wait til january, unless i can somehow get all of my christmas shopping done in the next three days.

here's a photo i took in cali.

ok adios amigos.

hey

hey what's up. i wrote that little bit of creativeness on the airplane. i also wrote a journal entry for myself. 4180 words. i wrote it over the course of the long flight. i almost got the bends on landing this time too. luckily i chewed gum for every minute of the flight.

not sure if blogging makes me feel normal or weird now.

but i wrote an unbelieble amount on that plane ride. read a bunch too. i got this new vonnegut book called "armageddon in retrospect" and i really like it. wow i cant even get myself to capitalize a vonnegut title.

aright ill try to put up less sports photos, but right now i dont have enough of a selection

CREATIVE AIRPLANE WRITING

The transitions in pressure and altitude in an airplane over the desert expand and contract the craniums of seat-belted passengers. With packets of gum they combat the squeezing of eyesockets and the stiff vice which wedges temples. The available overhead controls simulate the breeze and the sun, allowing a climatic input to grace cheeks.

The bends lie in steerage, dormant until a half hour before landing, when they rev up their tornado bodies and crawl up to the lifejacket seat bottoms, where they infiltrate the arm rest. From here, they turn into vapor and ride a siphoning eddy to the ear.

extremely quick post before i get on the airplane

i'm on wireless here at the airport and gotta get something out before i get on the plane

i had a good trip, i just got an overpriced turkey baguette, i'm looking forward and not looking forward to getting home for various reasons, i'm enjoying blogging more, i wanna go skiing.

not 100% sure if im gonna make this trip again next year as i might need to start mixing it up.

ok i gotta go wait in line, later, Dave

not reading the d anymore

there are a lot other links i wanna put up and a lot of other stuff i should be talking about and i should be recapping my cali trip so far but i gotta get this outta the way first -- i'm going to be actively not reading the dartmouth anymore.

the d = The Dartmouth - America's oldest college newspaper

i don't think i'm fabricating when i say that i've read every issue of the d since arriving on campus in september 2001. seems a little ridiculous to say, but i'm a big reader of newspapers and online articles. both when i've been on campus and when i've been off campus, i've kept up with it. during each fall, winter, and spring semester, the d is published 5 times a week. during the summer semester its only published twice a week.

at campus i would always pick up a copy of it to read during lunch. after graduation i have always checked it online devotedly. i've read many, many, many issues of the dartmouth. mostly for the hanover police blotter (just kidding, i like reading the rowing recaps too. just kidding, i read the news and arts stuff, but avoid the op eds).

but i'm sick of reading the d and hearing about the latest screw up by current dartmouth undergradates. or budget cuts. both topics are horrible. so i'm going to try to force myself to not start typing t-h-e-d into the address menu of firefox during the weekdays. today's day 1.

come on dartmouth students (slash dartmouth guys) -- behave yourself. please. then i will start reading my beloved college newspaper again.

-Dave

live from orange county

hey what's up. so i left LA today and am down in orange county for a brief sojourn. the drive down here was pretty crazy -- it was raining (it never rains here) and we passed two (2!) turned over trucks on the road. bad scene. other accidents too. all sorts of bad traffic. we only hit a bit of it, but it was scary driving in the rain and ppl here aren't used to it at all.

i'm sitting on the couch with my amiga and her brothers and we're watching dan in real life and it's awesome. this weekend was pretty terrific -- we met up with C.M and my brother and saw the hotel room center of operations for the conference. yeah i'm not really divulging names or places right now, maybe i will later. but everything's really good and even though it rained today i'm having a fantastic time.

oh yeah and boston college is going to play the university of southern california in the emerald bowl on december 26th at 8pm eastern time. aright, get excited!

k later

-Dave

miracle mile

how's it goin. here i am in miracle mile near downtown. not bad. andy's got a sweet place. we're gonna try to set it up a little more today. i slept on a leather couch last night (reminds me of his place two years ago). but i feel fine.

the plane ride last night was interesting. it was the emptiest plane ive ever been on, maybe a third full. so i had three seats to myself. i read my book during take off then shut the lightoff and was in and out of consciousness the rest of the ride. the plane ride seemed like it only took a couple hours.

then eventually i woke up as we were beginning our descent. the last 20 minutes of the descent were excruciating. my ears hadnt been popping and i hadnt been adjusting to the pressure and i didnt have any gum and i got pressure sickness or whatever its called (i dont feel like googling it right now).

it was awful. it felt like my eyes were gonna pop out of my head or that my brain was gonna explode or that my cranium was about to be cracked. not an enjoyable sensation. i was freaking out. i nearly asked a flight attendant for some help. i realized that the lady next to me had some gum as we touched down, but it was too late. i took a couple aleve and drank some water and eventually felt better, but wow i do not want to experience that again. im having flashbacks.

unfortunately i left my book on the plane. its ok though, ive had it for like a year plus it feels like and its a cheap paperback so i think i'm gonna order a new one. here's a link to it though in, it's good critical reading, and i'm a sucker for coetzee.

Inner Workings: Literary Essays 2000-2005: J. M. Coetzee

ok im looking forward to today, hopefully meeting up with chris and jeff and getting some things done.

here's a cool comic stip i just stumbled upon (without using stumbleupon) --

xkcd - A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language - By Randall Munroe