Dicks and iPods

I've got a buddy who, in the interest of my sick amusement, makes terrible judgment calls. I can only assume it is intentional, given that were he to apply the same unsound judgment across the board then he would have doubtlessly killed himself long ago, probably by using the hair dryer while still in the shower. Although I try think of him as the modern embodiment of a comedy of errors, the predictability and gravity of his gaffes tend to lose their humor value after a while, and you begin to feel like someone who's laughing at an athlete fall in the Special Olympics. What really saves him from pity though is his A+ boyscout "glass is half full" attitude toward it all. I guess in his position, it's either that or just giving up on life and choosing a different occupation, like growing mold.

During the implosion of one of his relationships, I sent him an email asking him how it was going, living with an ex-girlfriend he absolutely hated. His response was, "Oh pretty good, I try to stay away from her but you know how it is, sometimes it's just so tempting to stick your penis in the toaster, even if you get burned." We've since integrated that little gem into our vernacular, but it never really occurred to me until recently how absolutely horrible of an analogy that is. Neither I, nor any male I know, has ever expressed the remotest of interests in sticking one's penis in a toaster. I mean really, it takes most of us to our early teens to figure out how to stick our penis in our hands, much less a mechanized contraption that exists for 3 minutes in the morning while you're waiting for your Eggo waffles. Of course I'm sure many members of the ILC (International Lesbionic Conspiracy) wouldn't mind setting a few wieners to a few shades past "Dark", but they're just angry.

Hmm. Actually, that's an improvement.

Anyway the whole reason I thought of this is as I was folding my freshly cleaned laundry, I realized I'd left something in a pocket of a pair of pants, and out came my iPod. Jury's still out on whether it will work again, but I began to think of all the obvious terrible combinations: Jews and Palestinians, mayonnaise and fries, black jellybeans with anything, George Bush and pretzels, to name a few. Surely a little $300 toy with a relatively gigantic tumbler full of hot water and dirty underwear has to be on that list. But, as my buddy and I both independently prove, these things tend to happen anyway. Probably be best if I sold the toaster.

Top Ten Failed Top Ten Lists

This is obvious, but there's a huge gap between being simply funny and being a comedian. People, including myself, have funny ideas all the time. But a comedian can seamlessly link one funny idea to the next, making continuous stream of funny, not "Oh, and speaking of bisexual dwarf midgets, how does an Arkansas man tell if his wife is on her period?" For the rest of us who don't have this cohesive ability, there are top ten lists. Aside from David Letterman, top ten lists existed on the internet long before the blog explosion. One of my favorites, about 8 years ago there was a website called Heckler's Online which posted reader submissions to a weekly sponsored topic, like "Top ten things Monica Lewinsky is sick of hearing" and "Top then things found in David Koresh's Bathroom" (remember, this was a decade ago, and they were tasteless)

Every now and then I have a few funny answers, but I never make it to 10 so I never write them down. On my way to work the other day, I was thinking about "Top 10 Cross-Promotional Failures" and I got pay-as-you-go surgery, Valentine's Day Vasectomies, and all-you-can-eat abortions (ok admittedly that last one I made up but I think it's hilarious) but that's a few shy of 10. Anyway there's a reason why I'm thinking about this. My buddy, who's pretty overall brilliant when he's not sticking his dick in toaster ovens sent me this email, and I've been allowed to reproduce it verbatim here.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
You'll appreciate this. I had to give a presentation yesterday and
afterwards I realized that in a lot of ways giving a presentation is
like having sex.

1. You spend a lot of time preparing, you sweat a lot while it's
   happening, and you let out a big sigh when it's done.
2. It's good to butter up the crowd with a few jokes.
3. Talking too much and too fast is disaster.
4. If it's really flashy and pretty then there's probably not a lot
   of substance.
5. Eye contact is good but it can be distracting.
6. I've been accused of using my hands too much, and I've been
   accused of not using my hands enough.
7. The more times you do the same one, the less you care about it.
8. It's always better in large groups.
9. It's always better when there's a free lunch involved.
10. The worst part is the questions afterward.

And there's one way that it isn't like sex at all:

1. I always think I'm doing a really short presentation but it turns
   out I go for twice as long as I was supposed to.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Now before you think wow, this guy is brilliant, here's another comment he made to me, on the same day:
him: here's a tip:

5:34 PM

me: uh oh

tips from you are like the farmer's almanac of sex advice

him: don't tell a girl that she got you all into middle eastern girls when she is, in fact, pakistani

apparently there's a difference

That's more along the lines of penis in toasters.

Don't Ask Me Questions

I get up this morning, and after buying my usual supplements of penis pills and donkey pornography, mortgage my non-existent house, pour some money into pump-and-dump stocks, I come across this email sitting in my inbox:

-------- Messaggio Originale --------
Oggetto: I am dumb and I need your help
Data: Thu, 8 Mar 2007 21:05:26 -0500

I'm not so smart and something's giving me some trouble.

I'm trying to have my discrete-time control system tune itself automatically so that it matches some sort of desired step response. The tuned value is sort of like the control cost in an optimal LQR controller. One value for the SISO case. I numerically evaluate the frequency response of the controller for some value of the cost, then I multiply it by the DFT of a step (actually a long-period square wave since it's a discrete-time system). I compare the resulting inverse DFT to the step response I want. I tune the cost by minimizing the squared error between the predicted step response and my desired step response. Great, it works. Only for my controller it is actually more useful to tune the response to a zero reference and a nonzero initial condition.

My question is, how can I use my computed frequency response to predict the settling response? Am I doing this all the wrong way?
-------------------------------------

It's too early for me to think, so I send him some stupid response:

-------- Messaggio Originale --------
Oggetto: Re: I am dumb and I need your help
Data: Fri, 9 Mar 2007 07:38:51 +0100

I'll answer this when I get to work, but first off, no one who sends an email titled "I'm dumb and I need help" includes the acronyms LQR, SISO, DFT, blah.

When I read the title, I was SURE you were emailing me from the ibook of a girl in whose apartment you found yourself and after doing her while she was sleeping you needed to extricate yourself so you did the only thing you knew how, which was email me. So sure. Know that I really don't mind your weird segues into just asking whats really on your mind, I just sometimes wish you had the guts to get it out.
-------------------------------------

Then an hour later I realize what he really meant when he emailed me, so I write him again.

-------- Messaggio Originale --------
Oggetto: Re: I am dumb and I need your help
Data: Fri, 09 Mar 2007 02:53:38 -0500

Hey,
Sorry I didn't figure out what you meant earlier, I had just gotten up and I was sleepy. Here's what I think you should do. First, find a bowl of warm water and a wash cloth. I figure you're in your own apartment (otherwise how did you get like this?) so it should be easy. Ok, now start massaging the warm water around your neck, and whatever else is exposed. The trick here is to relax the muscles so that you don't damage anything. Now we're going to do it in two steps, the first step is the chin and the second is the back of the head.

Tuck your chin in to your neck, like you're trying to be a turtle. Now exhale deeply and pull. The warm water should alleviate some of the stubble burn, but you might feel it tomorrow. Now that this part is done, most people (well, whoever else gets themselves in this situation anyway) think it's all over and jerk back, but the back of the head can still do a lot of damage. Inhale, (I bet that part sucks, but at least now your mouth is free) then exhale again deeply (more warm water if you want) and do one final pull, pushing with your hands against the backs of your legs if you need to.

There, now your head should be out of your ass. I'm just amazed you could compose an email in that position!

Fucked Up Things That Didn't Happen to You Last Weekend

It takes a lot to make a 40€ flight to London not worth it, which is why RyanAir makes it company policy. After all, if it's worth it to me, must not be worth it to them. A departure at 11:30pm instead of 10pm, one check-in counter for a whole plane full of people, flight staff who speaks "English" and nothing else, and seat backs which don't recline. Add this to a splitting stomach ache and you have the makings of my Friday evening. I've since discovered that if I eat a pound of peanuts at a time I get a stomach ache, which would technically make them the perfect snack food. Quantized morsels of fatty salty goodness, they have a built-in consumption limiter. Problem is, only works half of the time.

My plan: spend the weekend in London with Harry, the brother of a good friend. He was there for the presidents' day weekend, and a friend of his was planning on meeting us there. He didn't give me many details except that the friend was female.

Hopping off the bus from Stanstead airport put me in Victoria station at 3am, at which time the central nightlife was crowded around a pot of boiling oil filled with various pieces of bread and pastries. It never occurred to me that refried bread would be the first food I would come across in London, but maybe that's just because I was trying to forget Liverpool. 45 minutes and an expensive cab ride later, I approached the front desk of the hotel where Harry and I agreed to share a room. The clerk insisted that I would get lost trying to find the room, so he accompanied. I didn't imagine what would be so hard until I actually went inside. The place looked like it came straight from an M.C. Escher sketchbook. The cleaning staff must routinely find the bodies of elderly guests who got lost on the way to the ice machine and never made it out.

It's 4am, so I rap his door hard to wake him up. We hear a girl yelp followed by bumping and furniture noises. Not missing a beat, I turned to the clerk and said, "I wonder how much he paid for her." It's fun seeing Indian people turn red and look at the floor. I was dog tired, and I barely waited to be introduced to this Alice girl before returning to the front desk and shelling out 90£ for my own room. Before you say that better have been a nice hotel, it wasn't, and I don't want to hear anymore about it.

Saturday started off nice and sunny, an auspicious start which in retrospect was more like the reprieve, but in good spirits we explored Notting Hill and the food it has to offer. Indian food is good, the Kebabs are all good, and fish and chips are tasty. Beans and eggs on toast is also good. Now that we were more relaxed, I got to meet Alice a bit. She was pretty in a Kate Moss sort of way; nice features which would have been nicer if it didn't look like someone put her skin in a tourniquet. She had that waif-ish cocaine look which at sunny 11am worked because it diverted attention from my own relentless gluttony.

By the afternoon I began to cool to her presence, owing to the fact that she was incessantly smoking pungent hand-rolled cigarettes and she seemed unable to either make decisions or offer anything substantial to the conversation. She was even vague about what exactly she was doing in London, stating simply that she hadn't had a job for almost a year, and a well-connected friend of her mother offered her something in London so that evening she would check herself into a nice hotel on his dime. She also wore stilettos which entitled her to complain every block and make real exploration on foot impossible. By the time we'd gotten to Big Ben I wished she were just a bag of horse shit. Like her, it would just sit around and smell bad, but at least it would have handles for easier dragging.

Against our burgeoning moment of inertia we plodded on, managing to see some famous sights of London in the waning sunlight, which was quickly being replaced by a uniform layer of grayness. What little she did add to our conversation all started with, "So this one time me and me girls get together, and because I was right fucked up about something, we get so drunk, and then my friend right, she says let's have some fun..." Not only did she inherit the Kate Moss looks, she got the drug problems too. Swell.

By the evening I'm just about through with this girl, and Harry sympathetic as he was to my situation just ended up at odds with himself, trying to balance the undeniable fact that she is a complete strung out airhead with the sex he is anxious to have later that evening. At this point, feeling sorry for myself that I'd spent 40€ just to come and babysit an addict, I took control of the situation and sat us down while I ate several pieces of piping hot fried fish. Harry tucked in as well, but Alice just looked on glumly. Like an obese person who orders half the menu at a fast food joint then washes it down with a diet coke, I'm of the opinion that as long as you can roll and smoke a cigarette with one hand while talking on a cell phone, if you think something I'm eating is unhealthy you can SHUT THE FUCK UP.

After dinner the time had finally come for us to part ways; Alice was going to check in to a nice place in the Covent Gardens, right in the heart of London. On the 30 minute subway ride over all she could talk about was how great it was going to be to rack up a huge tab at her mini bar and not have to pay a cent. I, feeling the second wind of a marathoner rounding onto Boylston, even did my best to laugh along. We dropped her off without incident, and as soon as she was out of earshot I asked Harry where the hell he met her. "Oh, at a bar in Prague last year," was his reply. Figures.

Maybe fried fish isn't very filling, or maybe I felt cheated out of my due enjoyment thanks to the third wheel, but whatever it was we were both famished. Finding food in London near 11pm is harder than one might think, nonetheless we found an open Indian restaurant and settled into nice overpadded chairs. The vacuous silence left by her departure was actually a positive warmth that I intended to savor, so there wasn't much talking going on (who knows, maybe Harry was visualizing the sex he wasn't getting that evening) aside from ordering, until my phone buzzed.

It would be melodramatic of me to say "I knew this was going to happen" and yet Harry was a lot more surprised by the text message "Help call me I'm in deep shit-Alice" than I was. We learned from a halfway hysterical Alice that she was somehow at some cheap hotel in east London. Turns out her mom's friend was recruiting her for a job sexual in nature, and he sweet talked her into coming to London but once she got there he was all business. It might seem a bit cruel in retrospect, but the first thing we asked her was if she didn't mind waiting for us to finish our dinner. I suppose at this point we really didn't take her seriously. What made her so infuriating is her demonstrated inability to do absolutely anything. A conversation went something like this:
Me: Where are you?
Her: I don't know, a different place.
Me: How did you get there?
Her: He drove me.
Me: Are you alone?
Her: Yes.
Me: Ok, get out of there and get a cab back to our hotel.
Her: I don't have any money.
Me: Don't worry, we'll pay the cab when he arrives at the hotel.
Her: Ok.

(calls back 5 minutes later)

Her: How do you call a cab?

Sweet jesus. After 40 minutes, we'd hastily finished our dinners and seeing as she was in the exact same spot as she was when she called, we had a decision to make. Conscience stricken and fed up with dealing with her shit, we decided to take care of things properly. We called Alice and told her to stop trying to find a cab (harder than it should have been, given she hadn't been at all successful) because we were on the way. We went outside and flagged a cab. The cab told us that our only option to go that far out was to hire a "minicab" which charged by the hour. Twenty minutes later, we were in a nicely equipped Volvo minicab following the gradient to a seedier and seedier London. 10 minutes from our destination, I call Alice and tell her to gather her things and check out.

Arriving at the shack of a motel, I saw her through the window at the front desk. I overheard her arguing with the desk clerk over why she should have to pay extra for room service, and if she couldn't just put it on the bill of her room which was being paid by her mom's not so benevolent friend.

Me: Look, whatever it is I'll pay the bill, let's just go.
Her: I haven't packed yet, I was talking down here.
Me: Ok well go pack your things, I'll pay this off.
Her: Oh I haven't ordered anything yet, I was just wondering.
!????!!!?

We finally all pile back into the cab, and I insist on sitting up front so that Harry can sit with Alice in the back. Mostly though, I was just exhausted and every foot between myself and Alice was a golden foot. I finally felt a sense of mild gratification that in spite of spending over $200 we got this girl out of a risky situation. "So, what are you doing out here?" I become presently aware of the smiling Indian cab driver who was sitting on the passenger side driving the car. I explain my weekend trip and the excitement surrounding Alice who at that moment was oblivious due to the high school hanky panky going on in the back seat. He was a pleasant looking fellow, and I was appreciating the conversation until he asked, "So, you know after we drop your friends off do you want to get a drink?" I thought I'd misheard until he said, "Where are you staying? You can stay with me if you like."

At that moment I reflected on my weekend. I got into London at 3am Saturday morning just to find myself sexiled and out 90£, I spent the day with a cocaine addict who regaled me the whole day with stories of substance abuse, then ruined my evening with a wild adventure into the shady streets of London's east side escaping pimps, and finally just when I think it's over I get to be privy to adolescent petting in the back seat of a cab, with one of London's finest gay Indian cab drivers propositioning me up front. Fucking brilliant.

At least I didn't have to pay for my room the second night.

Kidding!

Awkward

awk·ward (ôk'wərd)
adj.

1. Not graceful; ungainly: Juxtaposed against her competition-level salsa skills, his movements were awkward and stiff.
   
2. 1. Not dexterous; clumsy: as they exited the club, he tried to hold the door open for her but managed to walk into a glass wall instead.
      
   2. Clumsily or unskillfully performed: later, he tried to open the wine bottle and the cork broke in half, much to his embarassment.
      
3. 1. Difficult to handle or manage: fitting two people in a single bed was an awkward task.
   2. Difficult to effect; uncomfortable: The squeaky bed left the couple but the most awkward positions.
      
4. Marked by or causing embarrassment or discomfort: after spending three hours in the morning consoling himself with the wise words "at least you'll never have to see her again", the shame was just beginning to wane as he was reintroduced to her at lunch as his friend's ex-girlfriend.

Where are we, Mexico?

It's amazing what sort of demographics you fall under when you consult an online dictionary from a computer in Italy. I couldn't imagine this ad is a moneymaker, but then again a quick glance in my spam folder and I see everything from stock trading to videos of zoo animals attacking teenagers. Naked.

Speaking of bizzare events, I was just in Prague. We're chillin at a bar, enjoying our 65 cent beers. Within 5 minutes we spot a pair of ostensibly single females of reproductive age. There was an unspoken agreement between the two of us that I was to take the less attractive one, given the events of the previous night. Let's back that up.

The night before, we were doing the exact same standing-half-slumping at the bar over an alcoholic beverage when we were approached by two women, one of whom was very attractive, and challenged to a game of foosball with the wager that the losers buy the next round of drinks. It's fortunate that drinks were so cheap because we got soundly beaten two games straight--the second game was a gift to try and regain face after getting swept the first one--and ended up sipping some tart throat-burning concoction chosen by the girls, which in retrospect was their second ploy to get us to buy them more drinks by getting us drunk. The two girls were Serbian, and the hot one who focused on me was a wannabe model trying to get something started in Prague. I could go on but I'll cut to the chase. A hour later, emboldened by all the cough syrup I had been drinking I asked her if she wanted to dance. Holding her recently refilled drink she insisted that she was expecting a text message containing the recipe for Lasagna and couldn't break eye contact with her cell phone until she received it. It saddens me to think that right now somewhere in the world this girl is going, "Yeah well that's nothing, this one time I told this guy..."

In any case because I got all that face time with the hot one (whole lot of good that did me) this night I would play a good wingman. We launch our two-pronged attack, and he dives right into what appears from the corner of my eye to be a very animated conversation. I started reserved, because I wasn't sure if he was really enjoying himself or she just had Tourette's. Sometimes Europeans gesticulate so oddly. Whatever distance I intended to keep she traversed before I got my first sentence out, and by that I mean she manhandled my arm. Then, she insisted that we speak Italian which isn't the worst thing in the world, if only she would stop manhandling my goddamn arm. Ever notice how girls know just the right spot to grab your arm? Right between the tendon and the insertion point of the tricep, so with just a light grab you feel like you're getting a body-fat caliper test done and reflexively tighten. Then, if they're the "fresh" varaiety they'll make some quip about your physical puffery whereas in fact 90% of the time the placement of her hand is just goddamn unpleasant.

After 10 minutes of Q&A with as many furtive glances in the other party's direction as I dared to make sure the suffering I was enduring was for a greater good, she asks me to recite some French poetry to her. She clasps her hands in front of her, tilt her chin up and look expectantly skyward. I'll be damnned if I know any poetry in any language, unless you count the perverse piece my so-called friend wrote to a girl on Valentine's Day last year in MY name, and then proceeded to go on a date with her NOT in my name. This poem drew a similie between the color of blood and grape juice. I hate that guy. Anyway I was at a loss, until I remembered what I read on the internet, opening paragraph. So I began to recite some lyrics, but in the back of my mind I knew the truth: I was being a tool. Another 5 minutes of this, my dutiful fulfillment of wingman duties only interrupted by her breathy exclamations of how beautiful French is, and I couldn't take it anymore. By now her thumb and forefinger were dangerously close to boring through my arm, and I had the looming feeling that I'd be here until coyote ugly. Morever, the other couple had dissappeared around the corner only adding to my despair.

Realizing that bringing our little French séance back to reality might be too jarring for her, as gently as possible I suggested that we try to rejoin with our respective others so that we don't get lost. Bad move. She spun about to face me, all the airy joy replaced by scorn, and barely said "Bye" before storming out of the bar. I took a minute to regain the self esteem I lost when I recited French rap lyrics to a girl in a bar and found the remaining couple around the corner chatting cheerily about cadavers. I carefully measured my words to diplomatically explain how things went down without directly accusing her friend of being wacko, and fortunately for us she understood all too well. Apparently her less attractive friend has a complex of being in her hotter shadow. So, when I mentioned rejoining she thought I was through with her and ready to move onto the main course. Of course that's a no brainer, and maybe in my desperation I didn't word things as carefully as I imagined, but still I really just can't bring myself to play psychiatrist when I'm at a bar in a foreign country. I mean, if you're going to be nuts that's fine but don't go to a bar and put yourself out there, stay at home with a pint of ice cream and reread your Tony Robbins.

Gluttony and Gifts

How to get more good food than you ever dreamed, free:

1. Mention you have never tried <insert name of nationally prided food product>, although you hear it's great.
2. Sit back and wait.

It's the little ironies of everyday life that reassure me I'm not invoking His name in vain, for he taunts me right back. The day I decide to bring a salad in to work (too many episodes of Sex and the City last night) a coworker pops by with, "Hey you want half this cake?"

Blogging is a Job

I've always regarded Gisele Bündchen as hot, but never paid her much attention. Thanks to her widely proliferated ad for D&G, she's been moved to the forefront of my attention.

Steve, being the good buddy he is, did me a favor that I couldn't do myself.

Awesome. Thanks buddy! Interestingly enough, you'll notice that she doesn't look quite the same between the two photos. For one, in the drawing her mouth is open more. At first I just thought Steve was changing it slightly, but he told me that the poster he copied from was different than the magazine scan, above. I didn't believe that D&G would issue two advertisements with nearly identical but different pictures. Sure enough though, if I take a magazine copy and compare it with a poster, they're infinitesimally different. As a matter of fact, I have seen at least three variations on this picture in print. I don't think I would have ever noticed that.

La conte a été crée!

Malhereusement, c'est tout ce que je peux ecriver.