What's Wang This Week (special five-year anniversary edition)

Against my better instincts, I decided to start watching Mad Men. Mainly I did this because I felt like I was becoming a bit too attached to light and happy comedic entertainment, and was becoming especially uncultured. Mad Men seemed easier than reading a book. Despite my initial indifference, I quickly became hooked and powered through all of it, finishing last night. Some of it was not that pleasant -- I'm not very attuned to drama anymore, I guess -- and I watched too much, too quickly, but I had to get through it as quickly as I could so I could Google "I hate Betty Draper" without worrying about spoilers. Man do I hate Betty Draper.

Me and the rest of the LUGs bought Settlers of Catan a few weeks ago. I don't know why we didn't buy it sooner, since Jowen and I were playing online probably four times a week a few years ago. Jowen and I were so addicted we would play two-player Settlers, which is about the dumbest thing you can do. He beat me all the time, and I wish I'd saved some of the numbers, because the number of times he rolled 7s more than I did must be statistically significant. I used to half-jokingly accuse him of cheating by altering the random seed on his computer, which he would always deny. Since we've been playing the real board game, though, I've noticed that his dominance has all but disappeared. Now, I've noticed that now when I say "Not so good when you don't fix the game, are we?" to him, he doesn't seem to reject the notion quite as quickly, and there might even be a hint of embarrassment.

So, as the reigning King of Catan (having won all five real games we've played so far, as well as being 2-1 in two-player Jowen-Richard grudge matches), despite the fact that I'm clearly going to jinx my current run of success by just saying this, eat it, Jowen. I am your Catan daddy. It's good to be King.

A few days ago I was sitting in my apartment eating lunch with the slide door open to get some fresh air when I heard a rustling in the kitchen. Without thinking I started to worry that it was a skunk, but then I remembered that I don't live in Berkeley anymore and there's no way a skunk could get in a tenth floor apartment without me noticing. I also don't live in Port Coquitlam anymore, so it probably wasn't a raccoon either. No, it was probably a squirrel, I figured, and sure enough, it was. This is not a good thing, though: I've been afraid of squirrels ever since I was 18. I saw a squirrel chase another squirrel, and when it abandoned its pursuit, it stood there, staring at the fleeing squirrel, chest heaving up and down, with pure malice in its eyes. Ever since then, I've known that squirrels are far more man than me.

Anyway, I managed to direct it back out onto the balcony, but before I could close the door on it, it put its hands onto the sliding door track, stared right at me, and growled at me. What could I do? I couldn't close the door on its hands; this little bastard climbed up ten stories of concrete to get at my stuff: if I even made a move to hurt its hands, there could be some serious hell to pay. I tried not to soil my pants and stared it down, and finally it relented. I closed the door on it and resigned myself to losing the mandarin oranges I was keeping outside on the balcony. Now they're yours, squirrel. Please don't harm my family.

Today my blog is five years old, and what a five years it has been. I toyed with the idea of getting on Twitter a few weeks ago, because I'd be more likely to use it since it's much quicker to Twitter than it is to write a blog post -- and also I wanted to follow Big Ben. I decided against it because I feared I would end up never blogging again, and I'm very fond of the medium- to long-form blog format. I couldn't have written a paean to all-you-can-eat sushi on Twitter. I couldn't have written about my lost youth on Twitter. On the other hand, though, there's Big Ben. Regardless, I've made my choice. Long live I, Dickolas Wang.

Current Music: Dwight Twilley Band - I'm On Fire

What's Wang This Week

I went to Berkeley last weekend for a visit (DW Fun Fact: I graduated in May and am back living in Vancouver for the next couple of years as a postdoc at UBC). When I first moved to Berkeley, it was right at the end of what had been a gorgeous Vancouver summer, and so moving to the sunny climes of the Bay Area was actually kind of a letdown weather-wise. This is California? Where's the sun? What's with all this fog?

Anyway, because of this bad start I never fully appreciated the weather. Sure, I was aware that December in Berkeley isn't really much worse than August in Berkeley, and I was wearing shorts in November, but still, it never really sunk in how great the weather is in Berkeley. Well, all of that changed this weekend. Damn it is sunny there. And warm. And dry. And not windy enough to make me fear that my windows will blow clean off my building. So, although I may have said all sorts of things about Berkeley -- it's crazy, it's unfriendly, it's dirty, it's dangerous, the people are mean, Americans suck, the food is overrated, and so on -- in the past, I now have to finally admit that Berkeley is a beautiful place. Oh, and also, you can access Hulu from Berkeley, which is a major selling point right there. So thank you, Berkeley: you may be a bit of a bitch, but at least you're hot.

I've been playing a lot of pitch-and-putt golf for the last few months. It's past the season (read: it's cold, wet, and windy -- I would be playing so much golf if I were still in Berkeley), so I'm currently stuck at driving ranges. This works for me though because I'm entirely re-working my swing. I was playing pretty well for a while, but then during a round, just when I had pulled ahead of Jowen and put myself in birdie position at the 11th hole, he goes and hits a hole in one, which caused me to seize up and bogey the hole. Since then I've been psychologically shattered and have completely sucked every time I've played.

No matter: I've got the whole winter to watch instructional YouTube videos, improve a little bit, have a friend take a video of me swinging, and then completely start over because I don't look right in the videos. People say to take golf lessons, but the next person I pay $75+/hr to better also get me acquitted of some serious criminal charges¹ or at least provide delicious food, so that's out. Instead I think I will continue to watch YouTube swing instruction videos, and watch myself try to mimic it. I haven't seen this much of myself in videos since my videoblogging days. In related news, man am I fat.

Lately I've been completely obsessed with Community, the new show on NBC. From the moment I saw the commercial, I was interested: Joel McHale is on it! While some of you might know him as the host of The Soup!, or from any one of a number of commercials, or from The Informant!, I know him as the young guy from a Seattle sketch comedy show called Almost Live! I can't stress enough how important this show was to me growing up: it was one of my favourite shows through most of my teen years, and a great deal of what I know about being funny was learned from Almost Live!² (DW Fun Fact: the name of this I,DW feature was taken from this Almost Live! segment:



(link for those of you on Facebook).)

It gets better: the creator of the show is none other than Dan Harmon, who some of you who are not me might know and admire as one of the creative forces behind The Sarah Silverman Show (man I can't stand that show). However, those of you who are me will know him as Doobie Brothers and Van Halen producer Ted Templeman from Yacht Rock!



(link to the video for those of you on Facebook)

Anyway, this show Community is really great, it's really funny, and also I think I love Alison Brie:



Oh come on, go to CityTV's website (or Hulu, if you're American) and watch the scene in "Debate 109" where she lets her hair down and tell me that you didn't fall in love just a tiny bit. She's also in Mad Men so I thought I'd try watching it, but I watched the first episode and decided that I'll stick to Community. Maybe I should keep watching until I get to an episode that she's in. I also saw an episode or two of My Alibi, but decided that I'll stick to Mad Men. Also I got about two minutes into Hot Sluts, which is not what you think it is, but decided that I'll stick to My Alibi. Also, and I cannot believe I just did this, Googling "Hot Sluts" is not the most efficient way to find the URL for the show's website.

On that note, I leave you with a classic Almost Live! sketch³.



(link, you lazy Facebookers)

Current Music: ELO - Evil Woman

1. There's a joke here about criminal charges stemming from paying $75+/hr for services, but I'll leave that to the reader.
2. Which is why I went into math, I guess.
3. Non-DW Fun Fact: if the guy sounds familiar, video gamers, it's because he's the announcer in Super Smash Bros. Brawl.

What's Wang This Week

I'm writing this in Google Chrome. Neat.

I'm back in Berkeley now. My trip home this summer was a whirlwind of chasing after my nephew, spending time with family, spending time with visitors from Berkeley, going to concerts, and attending weddings. Then it was over, and all of a sudden I was in front of a classroom trying to explain some of the finer points of conditional probability to a bunch of new graduate students. People have been asking me if it's good to be back in Berkeley; ask me again after I've had a minute to catch my breath, as I don't think I have since before I left Berkeley.

Once I do find a second to catch my breath, you'll probably find me practicing on my very own brand new banjo. I'd call it an encounter with GAS, but besides the possible acronym issue¹, this wasn't an unplanned impulse purchase. This isn't the first time I thought about getting a banjo for myself, which you may recall ended in me deciding to buy a mandolin -- which I ended up never getting, but that's a different story -- but after borrowing one from Kyle all of last year, I decided that banjo really is cooler (I use the term loosely) and that I should get one for myself. Since Guitar Center was having their Labour Day sale and they had really cheap starter banjos in stock, I jumped. What better time than now to learn to play more kinds of, as Brad said, "really bad music"? Anyway, I'm spending my practice time learning to play some basic rolls following some lessons that I found on the internet. Once I finish that, I'm going to work on convincingly chewing on a long piece of straw while sitting on a porch.

My nephew is two and a half now and boy is he a handful. When I was in Paris this summer, he recognized me right away, but didn't know how to say my name, as R's give him some trouble. I wasn't that insulted, given that he couldn't say his own name either. A couple of times, he called me Artus, because one time he played with an 8-year-old boy named Artus and thought that Artus just meant "older boy that I play with". Anyway, now he can say his own name, and more importantly he can say my name... sort of. He calls me "Oucha". So long as he doesn't start calling that kid Artus "Oucha", I have no problem with that.

Also while I was at home, I did the Grouse Grind with some friends from Berkeley. We were so unprepared. I had been told by my friends Tung and Zara that if you take the Grouse Grind slowly, you can do it in 50 minutes. After about 1h15m, I remembered that Tung once did about 150 pushups in one minute. Anyway, we made it up in 2h15m or so, hampered in the first third by Shankar, the fittest member of our squad, having just eaten a large spicy meal, and then hampered in the last third by the rest of us being unable to keep up with him post-digestion. At least we made it up; Wikipedia tells me that the Grind's difficulty is "often underestimated" and that North Shore Rescue has to actually rescue people who are unable to finish it. It was an accomplishment, made sweeter by the fact that I never have to do it again ever.

Earlier on in the summer Allan also visited from Berkeley, and I spent a weekend showing Allan and Shankar around Vancouver a bit. We walked around the Seawall on the first day, and they're not the type to complain, but I started to suspect they were getting a bit tired of walking when they started to slow down a bit. My suspicions were confirmed when they suggested that we sit down after about 7K and they never suggested that we get back up and keep walking. That night we did more walking to get to and from the fireworks, and the next day both of them were sore and really tired. I'm a little worried that my friends from Berkeley are just going to remember Vancouver for being really tiring and difficult, and not for the amazing all-you-can-eat Japanese food, which is how I remember it.

A good friend of mine back from the good ol' days of the Math Club got married right at the end of my time at home. It was a great wedding and I'm really happy for her and her husband. The wedding was great fun and it was a fantastic time catching up with the old Math Club folks. I've been to a couple of weddings in the last year and a bit, and both times, instead of the couple kissing when glasses are clinked, they require you to stand up and sing a love song. Both times, now, I've sang "All Out Of Love" by Air Supply. That was an even more fantastic time. The other Math Club folks suggested I sing some "Roxanne", but I felt it was inappropriate to compare my friend to a prostitute on her wedding day.

I also played quite a bit of Rock Band over the holiday. I was already looking forward to the next generation of Guitar Hero/Rock Band games, but this actually had me considering spending $140 to buy the crippled Wii version of Rock Band just so I could practice the drumming. Guitar Hero is great, but even though you might be honing some skills that could help you in actually playing the guitar, at the end of the day you're basically wasting your time. (Albeit in the best way possible.) With the drumming on Rock Band, though, you're potentially actually learning to drum, so it's educational. Right? Right? Right? Anyway, that didn't materialize on account of spending the money on the banjo, and also as I figure one annoyingly-loud-for-my-landlord-and-neighbours hobby was good enough.

My parents had a food processor that they never used, so I packed it here to Berkeley. I was so excited to use it that I spent most of last week thinking of things to make in it. I decided to try making mayonnaise, since I figured that it would be impossible to make without a food processor. Ever seen it done? It's like frickin' alchemy or something. Anyway, apparently it's not that easy to make it in a food processor. That was a complete failure, and a waste of 500mL of oil and four eggs. I was so pissed off that I decided to conquer Mount Mayo with no oxygen tank, and I took up mixing bowl and whisk. Surprisingly, this actually worked, wasn't very hard, and was much more fun than watching oil and eggs sloshing around in the food processor. It really tastes a lot different from store-bought mayo (more French somehow), and now I understand how people might serve mayo, and only mayo, as a sauce for fish.

Some guys work on their car, or bench press 350 pounds. I'll take my banjo and my mayonnaise. My banjonaise, if you will.

Current Music: Blue Rodeo - Casino

1. Actually the G in GAS is for "gear", not "guitar", so this is not an issue at all.

What's Wang This Month

I'd meant for an entire week after the Canucks' season was over to write my own take on their season and how they missed the playoffs. I thought this was a pretty self-serving and douchebag thing to do, but then I read a post by Matthew Good about the Canucks which I disagreed with greatly, and I decided that dammit, if Matthew Good can do it, then so can I. Matthew Good has always been an inspiration to me musically, in that listening to him emboldened me in writing songs because I refused -- and still do -- to allow him to be the biggest musician to come out of the Coquitlam area; the same principle holds here.

I never got around to it, of course, but the long and short of it was this: the Canucks were never good enough or deep enough (although this was changing, which we should thank Dave Nonis for), even when healthy, to win the Cup anyway. When healthy, they were definitely good enough to reach the second round, but the injuries they suffered were ridiculous. Besides, it always seemed clear that the plan was to hold on to their assets until this offseason when they finally rid themselves of $9M in salary tied up in Naslund and Morrison. It had to be this way given the absolutely insane prices people are asking for rentals these days at the trade deadline (Kesler, Edler, and Schneider for Brad "$7.8M" Richards¹?!) and Dave Nonis was wise to not make any deals.

The Sedins are facing all kinds of questions about whether they have enough grit in their game to succeed in the playoffs, but people tend to forget that the Sedins, despite some dry spells this season and their illness-affected 2007 playoffs, had always been solid playoff performers and are extremely effective when they stick to their cycle game. They finished the season off strong, as well.

People were calling for Vigneault's head because the team was playing boring defensive hockey, but I thought he was a good coach and made do with what he had. Let's not forget -- let's not forget, dude -- that the offensive juggernaut Canuck teams of the early part of this decade tended to evaporate in the playoffs, with the West Coast Express line consistently underperforming in their three playoff rounds. Having said that, you cannot convince me that Trevor Linden should have been sat in favour of Rick Rypien and Byron Ritchie.

Then Nonis was fired. So much for my opinion.

Much has been written about Francesco Aquilini's decision to fire him, and I tend to side with those writers who consider it a really bad move made by a meddling owner who doesn't know as much about hockey as he thinks. Having said that, new GM Mike Gillis' first press conference indicates that he might not be a total clown either, so I'm cautiously optimistic. His interest in improving scouting is something I am 100% behind, and yes, I also think the Canucks could use some more grit, because those are the kinds of players that succeed in the playoffs. Unfortunately, there's no tree where you can pick Jarome Iginlas, so it'll be interesting to see what happens this offseason.

Despite the constant stream of crap coming out of Canuckville for the last month, this was a beautiful moment:



(link for you Facebookers)

I'm really excited about the new Sloan album coming out in June. Surprisingly, I learned about it from their American label first. I've already pre-ordered it in the hopes that I get an autographed copy like I did with their last album. I've also already listened to it a number of times on their Yep Roc website, and I really like it, with the disclaimer that I've only repeatedly listened to Jay's and Chris' songs. I've decided that I like Yep Roc, although according to the interviews on this CBC Radio 3 blog they were previously on the same label as Berkeley's own William Hung.

I've recently been watching clips on YouTube from the original British version of Whose Line is it Anyway? I never realized until now how much it influenced me. It was the first time I really thought "I grew up watching this" about any show. When I was a kid, I didn't always want to be Trevor Linden, or an astronaut, or a rock star: I wanted to be Tony Slattery. If you've only seen the American version, check out the original, because you're in for a real treat.

Some highlights:

• Stephen Fry's "worst things to say to the Royal Family" -- for those of you keeping score at home, he's a longtime comedic partner of House himself, Hugh Laurie:
  
  (link)



• Tony Slattery's "There's no free lunch":
  
  (link)



• Tony Slattery's "Pecking order for fruit":
  
  (link)



• The American version wasn't without highlights either. Here's Robin Williams guesting:
  
  (link)

It's been a big month for video games. Between Smash Brothers and Mario Kart, I think I've got enough game to last me for the next year. I still haven't finished Guitar Hero 3, though. On the plus side, I've been playing more actual guitar, which is nice. Thinking about Matthew Good reminds me that I should be playing that right now instead of blogging, so I'll go do that. After Mario Kart.

Current Music: Sloan - If I Could Change Your Mind


1. Also, Brad "I had sex with Drummond's 17-year-old cousin whom I met in a bar shortly after winning the Conn Smythe" Richards, which is a story for another day.

What's been Wang this academic year

Okay so I think the reason I haven't been posting very much is because last semester I was a TA. Since my life revolves around the statistics department to the point that I actually smell like Evans Hall when I'm not there, and since I couldn't (and can't) write anything about my students, I had very little to write about. Also, my blog is now read by my parents, and has been brought to the attention of the faculty in my department, including my advisor (due to the time I ate ketchup on my chocolate cake), not to mention being imported onto Facebook, so I can't just go around talking about people all willy-nilly on the internets. When you take away work and friends, I find myself lacking in material.

I suppose that's also indicative that I'm working more effectively and don't have as many little tidbits to share about the things I read, watch, play, and eat. I only get about 8 hits a day on this blog, so I also might as well just share them with the 8 of you individually, and you're all my Facebook friends anyway. Then again, it's possible that if I wrote more, I'd have more than 8 hits; it's a vicious cycle.

I'm realizing now, though, that this was a bad idea. With the writers' strike on for the last four months, I could have totally tried to build my brand and become the iconoclast I've always dreamed of being. Hell, had I been more on the ball, I might have started Stuff White People Like before whoever started it did. I could even have taken a turn writing about American politics (long story short: Clinton), although my contribution to the political discourse goes no further than what I learn about on The Daily Show. Since TDS was heavily affected by the strike, my contribution might have consisted of me finally looking up Obama Girl to see if she was hot. Verdict: yes.

Instead, I've spent my free time playing video games, spraining my wrist, suffering from hives, eating popcorn, learning about proxy servers, and trying to SOCKSify Windows Media Player. My chance to reclaim readers and become a conversation piece amongst my friends is gone. I'm okay with that, because that's how I do things here at I,DW. There's something romantic about wasting opportunities and continuing on anyway. Plus, Guitar Hero is really fun, proxy servers are interesting, and popcorn is delicious. The wrist thing sucks, and don't get me started on hives.

After much work, I beat the entire Hard career on Guitar Hero III and am now onto the second-to-last set of songs on Expert. Unfortunately, I don't see myself getting to the last set anytime soon. I think I've been able to get this far because up until now all the songs have been within my abilities on the actual guitar, which are wasting away because I'm spending all my time on Guitar Hero. Now, though, I'm up against things I am incapable of; this hump will take longer to overcome. I really believe that once I get past this stuff, I will truly be a better guitar player. The danger is that I'll actually want to play Raining Blood.

I've decided to complete my Garfield and Friends collection. I bought volumes 4 and 5 on a whim and now I'm hooked, so my current plan is to buy a volume every time I need something from Amazon that isn't expensive enough to get free shipping on. Volume 3 came with a package of four electric toothbrush heads, and I suspect volume 2 will come when I decide to check out The Jam's "All Mod Cons" or Japanese sci-fi flick "Tetsuo II: Body Hammer".

Last week I went to my first ever rugby game: the "World Cup" between UBC and Cal, named after the long-defunct Vancouver World newspaper. Apparently I unintentionally chose to attend the two biggest powerhouses in North American college rugby, and they meet up every year for a two-game series. I went in not knowing who I'd end up cheering for, now that I've been at Cal for four years, but on the first tackle I found myself cheering for the T-Birds. You can take the boy out of UBC, but you can't something something something. I figure this is sensible because I could conceivably still get kicked out of Berkeley, while it's far less likely that UBC would strip me of my Bachelor's degree.

Rugby, it turns out, is a beautiful game (who knew?!) and I enjoyed watching a sporting event that isn't completely big business. Without commercials, an actual sporting event can be held in under an hour and a half (who knew?!). In the end though Cal won 35-17, which was a disappointing result for me, but I took pride in knowing that this was the least lopsided game Cal has played all year. To put things in perspective, their season opener was won on a score of 99-3, and the week prior to the UBC-Cal game, they had among their weakest second halves of the season, only winning 78-22. Beside the UBC kicker missing four straight kicks, the biggest difference as I saw it was that every time a UBC player got tackled, he went down and lost about 7 yards -- pardon me, metres; rugby is such a civilized game -- while all the Cal players could have four T-Birds hanging off them and still leg out a 5 metre gain. So aside from all of Cal's team being totally on the juice, it was a really close match.

Funny, though. I'm so used to only following hockey in Vancouver that I kept almost mistakenly calling the T-Birds the Canucks. This lasted until the Golden Bears opened up a 10-point lead; after that I started almost mistakenly calling the T-Birds the Grizzlies.

What's Wang This Week

If I haven't talked to you already, I'm home for the holidays. If you're around and want to get together, let me know. I'm looking forward to the following:

• Jiro;


• Memphis Blues;


• Top Gun (the Japanese restaurant, not the movie);


• LUGs poker; and


• LUGs Risk.

And if you drop me a line, I'll look forward to seeing you too!

I've been home for a week now and I haven't been to the gym in two. I've also been eating, and not in a healthy way, either. For example, I've been snacking on mixed nuts. I discovered that instead of eating the nuts individually, there's a whole bunch of taste possibilities that come from mixing and matching. This has made me far more willing to eat the hazelnuts. I'm feeling fat and sassy, and I haven't even been to most of my favourite restaurants around here. This could be epic.

The other day some of us were at Mike's place playing Guitar Hero. During one "solo" part, Graham started striking rock poses and in doing so pulled a muscle in his leg. He fell on the floor, but swiveled around so he could see the screen, and tried to keep playing. It was reminiscent of the scene in Spinal Tap where Nigel gets on his knees during a solo and can't get up. He did this for maybe 20 seconds and I considered getting in there like the roadie in that scene and propping him back up before he said that he may have pulled a muscle in his leg and was in pain. I laughed so hard I wasn't able to breathe for 2 minutes.

I've done some things other than eating and playing video games, but I'll spare you the details of my outbreak of hives and bring you the rest as I remember them, since another thing I've done is decide I need to blog more.

Current Music: Various Artists - Seriously Westcoast 2

What's Wang This Week

I don't know how I got so neglectful of this blog. It doesn't seem right, given that this blog is about the most notable thing I've ever done.

The second most notable thing I've ever done is score over 16,000,000 points on Tetris Tournament. I did that about a month ago, and I've barely played since. I felt, at that point, like I'd proved my point. I also upgraded my laptop to OS X 10.5, partially because I hoped it would speed up my computer, but also partially because then I could run Quinn, which I'd heard described as the best Tetris client ever (although they can't say that themselves as the Tetris people brought down the hammer of litigation).

After this success, I relented to peer pressure and agreed to give a talk in the Statistics Student Seminar about Tetris. Here was my abstract:

"All work and no play make Jack a dull boy", as they say, and perish the thought that grad students are dull. A pleasant diversion can take many forms; one of the most common is the almighty video game. Recently a wave of interest around one particular game has swept through the department: that elegant evergreen, Tetris.

However, the frustration of a bad game of Tetris often leads one to play again, and again, and again, until you achieve what you consider to be a "good" game. In my talk I will discuss and demonstrate general strategies and give some tips to make your game more consistent and improve your scoring, hopefully cutting down on the wasted time of a second (and third) game.

Time-permitting, I will discuss some results about a couple of subproblems of Tetris, including the proof that it isn't possible to play a single game of Tetris forever. This will be followed by a demonstration; in this demonstration I will discuss the relatively new "infinite rotation" rule and how it affects gameplay. I will also field questions about strategy and offer the insights of a Tetris player formerly ranked 20th in the world*.

* assuming Facebook rankings are world rankings.

You'd be surprised how much there is to say about Tetris.

Last week Jowen's friend Albert and Albert's friend Alpha passed through town and they stayed with me. We did the customary trips to Sizzler and In-N-Out, and they in return gave me food. They also invited me along to visit the Googleplex on Saturday, which was pretty awesome. Notably, they both beat Jowen in visiting me here. They were great guests and as such I'm happy to call them both my friends too. Awww.

This weekend is the Bacon and/or Chocolate Experiment of '07. I ordered a turducken from a local butcher, but I realized that we had the wrong date (he and I both thought American Thanksgiving was next week), so I called on Saturday to confirm. Turns out he didn't have my name written down at all, although this could have been because he couldn't make out my last name over the phone and was looking under "Leanne" or "Liane". Maybe I should call back and make sure he didn't write my first name down as "Rachel" this time.

I booked my flight to Vancouver for December 17. Book your calendars. This is no thanks to Adam, whose assholery had me planning to fly with him to Sea-Tac to save money until he found out -- after an Air Canada sale had ended, mind you -- that he had to stay right until the end of exam period because he has to help grade an exam. Fortunately, there were still ridiculously good fares available after he let me know, so he's off my shit list for the time being. Adam: what a douche.

I also finished Metroid Prime 3 in the last month. While it was good, I can't help but feel like my time would have been better spent playing Mario 64 before Mario Galaxy came out. Actually my time would have been even better spent eating more brown rice, which is cheaper and also nourishing.

What Was Wang This Month

Quite a bit, but the main thing that I feel like sharing right this minute is that I made leaps and bounds in my Tetris game and now my best score is 4395970, which at the time was good for 27th of 131205 (omitting the obviously hacked #1 overall score of 133333337). I'd like to thank Crowded House for breaking up in 1996 and releasing a ten-year anniversary DVD of their farewell concert, which slowed down the computer enough while I had it playing in the background that I could achieve this score.

This score is good not just because it's a huge improvement because it is a better score than the cute girl who was #10 for a long time, which means that maybe I'd be worthy of her now. It's also disappointing because my officemate Daniel's best score is now 491302, and my top score is no longer ten times his.

My nephew Thomas had the chicken pox last week. Those of you who knew me when I was 17 and had the chicken pox will understand how happy I am about this.

Bad news on the T-shirt front: the time is coming very quick to retire both my #1A and #1B T-shirts. My grandmother had done a quick mend of all the little holes in my Homsar shirt and my Dick's Lumber shirt while I was home for the summer, and that was great because it bought both shirts some time. Unfortunately, new holes keep appearing in Homsar, so I'm going to retire them while they still have some dignity. I intend to say more on this later, because it really is the end of an era.

I got Metroid Prime 3: Corruption three weeks ago, but I still haven't finished it. There are two reasons for this. One, I'm busy. Two, it's a first-person shooter, and despite the really cool Wii controls, just like all the other FPSs I've played in my life, it gives me motion sickness. I'm still willing to play it for an hour or two at a time though. That I'm willing to lose my appetite for a while just to play it says something about how good the game is, because my appetite is very important to me. It also says something about my frugality because I paid $50 for the game and it would feel like a waste if I didn't play it even though it causes me physical discomfort.

I bought tickets to see the Canucks play the Sharks on December 13. I managed to get a pretty big group together to go see them (14, and only Adam and I are actually Canucks fans), and despite Ticketmaster's sucking, thanks to Allan and Nick I was able to get tickets in groups of 6, 4, and 4. Since the size of the group basically makes this a thing, I think I may have to buy the #2 Ohlund jersey I've been wanting for over a year. This presents a problem, as the new Canucks jersey is really, really awful. While there's something to be said about buying a really, really awful jersey (who among us wouldn't love to have the awful yellow V jersey?), this jersey is so bad that I wouldn't be surprised if they changed it again within two years. On the other hand, that might give it even more novelty value after the fact.

Current Music: Crowded House - Time On Earth

What's Wang This Week

With my sister and her family all vacated from the house, I have had some time to relax (and some mornings to sleep without Thomas waking me up). For the last week I've been unwinding with a steady regimen of video games. I bought Rayman Raving Rabbids, and let me tell you, I was a fool to pick Super Monkey Ball over it in December. Super Monkey Ball? More like Super Monkey Asshole¹. I also played some poker and made almost $5. Which reminds me, I owe Jowen 70 cents.

The single most significant thing I've done this week is play Tetris Tournament. After my last post about Tetris Tournament, I had a breakthrough game and brought my high score to 964155. This was a huge improvement over my last high score, and I felt like my game had progressed almost to the point where I could just keep on playing and playing as long as I wanted, so I was, naturally, thrilled. What I didn't expect was that my score would put me 20th out of 60682 on all of Facebook. I was shocked; that's, like, a world ranking. That's not even just a world ranking, that's a good world ranking.

Unfortunately, it turns out I wasn't actually that close to being one of those guys who can play indefinitely, and for the last week I've been trying vainly to better my score to at least seven digits. The closest I've come to my high score is hitting about 850000 a couple of times, but most of the time my score hovers between 600K and 700K. As it is my high score from before is now 36th out of 73481, and it's not likely to improve anytime soon. It's getting difficult because if I want to play a single game of Tetris Tournament, I basically have to play for 25 minutes, so I can only really get in two or three attempts in a session before my hands overheat. On one hand that can't be good for my wrists, but on the other hand there's something to be said about going out of the world of functioning hands in a blaze of seven-digit Tetris glory.

For some time the #10 score on Tetris Tournament was held by a pretty cute girl. As I played, I'd be watching the top ten scores on the side and looking at her picture, and thinking, "I wonder who she is. I wonder if she knows she's my dream girl." Maybe I should have messaged her, but I think I'd have to be at least top 15 before she would take my messages.

A few weeks ago my mandolin bridge finally arrived -- six weeks after it was ordered. Of course, I wasn't in Berkeley to receive the mandolin, so it went back on the shelf, and when I get back I'll have to go and pick another one. If they run out before Sunday I think I'm going to have to challenge someone at Guitar Center to a duel. Of course now all of my best mandolin-learning time is past (time which I spent playing Tetris Tournament, I suppose), so instead of maybe getting OK at the mandolin, I'll have to set my sights lower and limit myself to learning to play Losing My Religion and Hasn't Hit Me Yet. Maybe -- maybe -- Maggie May.

It looks like I won't be able to join the jazz ensembles this semester, as two of the three intermediate combos conflict with my classes, and I have to TA anyway so I don't imagine I'll have a lot of time. Besides, that's time I can spend learning to play Losing My Religion. That's meeee in the cooooorner...

I realize that no one reads my blog anymore (and I hope it's mostly because I don't write as much anymore rather than that people don't like me anymore), but if anyone does and wants to see The Shins at the Greek Theatre on Friday October 5, let me know and we'll get tickets. Sooner rather than later, though; tickets have already been on sale for a week and I don't want to get caught without a ticket.

Current Music: Beck - Midnite Vultures

1. also: Super Monkey Balls; Stupid Monkey Ball; Sucks Monkey Ball; Super Monkey Bullshit.

What's Wang This Week

Basically just four things:

1. Flight of the Conchords (you're welcome);


2. VectorTD (get a feel for it on the default level, then try the "Do The Splits" map and feel my pain; thanks, Peter);


3. a 12" cast-iron skillet; and


4. continued GAS; I'll spare you the details.

Current Music: Flight of the Conchords - Beautiful Girl

What's Wang This Week

This is my favourite clip -- an outtake, no less -- from the excellent documentary I Am Trying To Break Your Heart, a film about Wilco and the making of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot.



I've been following the news about Jim Balsillie wanting to buy the Predators and moving the team to Canada. I of course would love to see this happen, especially if the Preds go on to win the cup the following year, just like what Colorado did to Quebec City. My officemate is from Tennessee and he tells me that the Preds don't have much of a fanbase in Nashville (hell, he's a Pens fan), so I think this would be great. Living in California, I think I have a good understanding of how little hockey means to Californians and most other Americans I have met. It's like sticking a square peg into a round hole. It doesn't work. I imagine it's not much better in Tennessee.

Of course, it's easy to say that as an outsider. However, I was a Vancouver Grizzlies fan, and I still feel jilted by the NBA. I figure it could have worked in Vancouver had they not had inept management and had basketball players actually wanted to play in Vancouver. It would really have helped had the team won more than 22 games in any one season while they were in Vancouver.

Jim Balsillie, if you manage to move a really good hockey team like the Preds to Canada, I promise that I will try not to make jokes about your name ("Bals").

The only thing I have trouble imagining is where they would put the new hockey team. Having never been to Kitchener, Waterloo, Cambridge, or Hamilton, I shouldn't say, but I would never have thought of any of them being real major-league sport cities, much in the same way I wouldn't imagine a hockey team in Burnaby or Surrey; yet that is probably where the team would end up. Another team in Winnipeg might be nice, but they can probably afford to hold out until the Coyotes inevitably get tired of trying to keep ice frozen in Phoenix and move back.

[table of women beside ours]:

[office gossip and chatter]

Jen:

[leans over to me, conspiratorially] Large groups of women scare me.

me:

[thinks this over] ... I scare large groups of women.

Current Music: Wilco - The Thanks I Get
EDIT (12:46AM, June 4/07): fixed the spelling of Jim "Bals" Balsillie's last name

What's Wang This Week

Yeah, so I didn't write much for a couple of months there. Sue me.

Around two months ago, I agreed to give a talk the day before Spring Break on stuff I worked on as an undergrad. This required me to remember the stuff I worked on as an undergrad, which basically amounted to re-learning it. So that took a couple of weeks. It was stressful but the talk went quite well, so I was pleased as punch to be heading into Spring Break on a high note. More or less immediately after the talk, I learned that I couldn't schedule my qualifying exam for next semester, because I'm a foreigner and they need me to do it by the end of my 3rd year so that they only have to pay resident tuition for me. Hooray!

I ran the hell away from my problems for the week of Spring Break and then I came back to Berkeley, put my head down, and powered through. I had five weeks to prepare for my qual, which seemed like not much time, but I had to give another talk two weeks before, so I did a big crunch for the first two weeks, and then spent the last two weeks trying to keep focused on fixing up my presentation, but ended up mostly just annoying my officemate. Anyway, last Thursday I did the qual and successfully avoided not being the first person in history to fail the qual in this department. Hooray!

So I told Tim the other day, "if it were possible to make love to a song, then right now I'd be trying to convince you that a half 'Rat Trap' baby is yours".

-- Théa

(I mean, it's an alright song.)

I celebrated passing the qual by doing all of the lazy fatass things I would ordinarily do that I hadn't done because I was doing qual prep. The day after my qual I returned to Fenton's, a local ice cream place where I once ate three pounds of ice cream in 20 minutes to get a free t-shirt. Because the first time was so, uh, hurried, I went back so that I could actually taste their ice cream and see if I liked it. (I did.) I washed that down with a few White Russians, because when I go dairy, I go all dairy.

And now I am blogging, because I have so many wonderful quotes to share with you from the last two months. I'll try and write them down as I remember them.

me:

... and so none of the American students who got into both here and Stanford came here. They all went to Stanford. Three of them even had the gall to write a rejection e-mail saying "Thanks, but we're going to Stanford. But we'll see you soon for an assistant professorship!"

Daniel:

Oh. [pause] But, I mean, those guys didn't seem like they were very strong students. They won't get jobs here.

Burn!

The week prior, Regan and her family visited San Francisco and I took time out to go have dinner with them. (I justified it since that was the day of the department picnic and I may as well take the whole day off if I'm gonna take half the day off.) We went to a restaurant called The Stinking Rose (motto: We season our garlic with food!) which is, you have probably guessed, a garlic-themed restaurant. (It seemed like a solid opportunity to take a girl to a garlic restaurant.)

I was looking for the cricket scores, so I called Vince because I knew he would be in front of a computer.

-- Shankar Bhamidi

Previously I had eaten at a place called Wild Garlic in Vancouver, which I had thought was a pretty good garlic restaurant. Well let me tell you something: The Stinking Rose does not fuck around. When they say they are a garlic restaurant, they mean it. Their signature appetizer, the Bagna Calda, consists of about 60 cloves of garlic roasted in olive oil and butter with just a hint of anchovy. This stuff was so good. You could take a piece of bread, cut it in half, then spread three cloves of garlic on each half. Roasted garlic is of course super-mild, so this isn't bloody murder or anything, but after about 20 cloves of it, it does start to build up. I decided to try the garlic relish that was just sitting at the table, thinking it would be a bit of a good change. That's when I remembered that raw garlic is not super-mild. This stuff was set to stun -- and I liked it. The onslaught didn't stop there: each entrée had about six cloves of pickled garlic on top for garnish. No, not for garnish... for flavour. They do not fuck around with that shit. I went home and drank some green tea, which helped with the breath a bit. But then the garlic breath came back, so I brushed my teeth. That helped a bit too, but then it came back again. I started to imagine that every time I got it out of my mouth, the garlic would just come back again because I had eaten so much that it was coming out of my skin, or at least coming out of my esophagus, so I gave up and went to bed.

So, anyway, the day after my dairyfest was spent mostly eating good bread from the Cheeseboard and playing Super Paper Mario, which was a post-qual celebratory purchase. As I ate this bread, I thought it would be great to make a Bagna Calda of my own for dippin', so I looked up recipes and found one that actually comes from The Stinking Rose's own cookbook. Excellent, I thought, so I was about to head out the door to pick up the ingredients. But! Then I happened to scroll down and got a look at the nutrition facts: one serving contains 72% of the recommended daily fat intake, and the recipe yields 8 servings¹. And I was going to eat... more than 1/8th of what I made. I decided against making it. Ordinarily I might still have done it, but remember that I ate probably upwards of a pound of ice cream and then at least half a cup of cream the previous night. Instead I made their super-strong garlic relish, since that was one of the two recipes they have on their own website, and consequently I don't think I've had good breath at any point in the last week.

Dave:

So, after the department picnic, my brother had two comments. First, that there were a surprising number of normal people there.

me:

heh

Dave:

Second, "Why is it that every social group I meet in California is led by an Asian guy in touch with hip-hop culture?"

me:

[thinking: "Brad? He's sort of in touch, maybe... but he's not my leader..."]

Dave:

he meant you

me:

Uh

Dave:

I think he's thinking of when you said "That's how I roll"

(Later I also remembered that I took a cup with a few drops of iced tea in it and poured it on the ground for my fallen homies. That's how I roll.)

One week before the exam, the jazz ensembles had the final concert for the semester, which was rather poorly timed for me, but was fun nonetheless. Besides that, I've spent most of my music time playing guitar and singing to myself in my apartment. I do this a lot really late at night. This week it's been ridiculously hot in Berkeley, so I had the window open. For the first time, the neighbour actually came and knocked and asked me to keep it down, probably because it was like 2AM. This had never been a problem before; I assume it was a problem this time because everyone's windows were open on account of the heat. Anyway, that's embarrassing, and I'm just glad I wasn't playing "Let's Get It On" or something at the time.

I've spent a lot of my playing time practicing playing the harmonica and the guitar at the same time. For the never-played-harmonica crowd out there, what you might not know is that between phrases you basically have to shake the spit out of the harmonica. This was a fairly disgusting thing for me to learn when I started playing harmonica, but then I decided to just run with it. (In fact, the first thing I learned about harmonica was to play it by blocking holes in the harmonica with my tongue.) The big challenge for me -- besides my awful coordination, which is a deeper problem than just musical -- is that when you play the harmonica in the harmonica holder, the thing angles downwards, and I drink a lot of water, and as such my mouth is rarely dry. As such, spit doesn't just collect in the harmonica: it flows into the harmonica. I basically bought the harmonica holder so that I could play "5 Days in May" by Blue Rodeo, you see, and I can typically get through the first harmonica bit just fine, but then after a couple of verses and one chorus, I go to play the second harmonica bit but the harmonica just doesn't work. There has to be a way to keep the harmonica going, some kind of automated spit valve maybe, but I have no idea what that could be. I don't particularly relish the idea of jumping up and down to try and shake out the stuff while I'm not playing it.

Speaking of which, I have no idea how you horn players do it. Spit in your instrument? Gross.

Do me a favour. Next time you're with a woman, take screenshots.

-- Steve Kwan

So I've been introduced to a whole family of jokes recently that I never knew existed: the "man with no arms and no legs" jokes. A friend told me yesterday that these jokes were maybe popular 20 years ago but they are enjoying a recent resurgence, much like synth pop. What do you call a man with no arms and no legs lying in front of a door? Matt. What do you call a man with no arms and no legs hanging from the wall? Art. The laughs just keep coming!

me:

What do you call a man in a...

Sébastien:

Does this man have arms and legs?

me:

Oh, crap.

So yeah, I've been coming up with a few of my own. What do you call a man with no arms and no legs in a jar? What do you call a man with no arms and no legs, stage centre?

me:

What do you call a man with no arms and no legs in a jar?

both:

[pause]

Jowen:

dillman?

The day of my qual itself was kind of weird. On one hand, the qual went decently and I passed, so that was great. However, that was also the day of Game 5, Canucks/Ducks, and we all know how that turned out. It was a day of ups and downs. Also, Adam and I decided to order pizza for the game (up) but the pizza was disgustingly greasy (down). It did come with good wings though (up). A few days ago I found out that Roberto Luongo's "equipment malfunction" in Game 5 that made him miss the first five minutes of overtime was actually a bathroom break. So it was a disappointing end to the Canucks' season (down), but fortunately the ending was about as amusing as it gets² (up).

Unfortunately, I no longer see Luongo as superhuman.

In discussion with Angie, it was suggested that I celebrate my post-qual freedom with five steaks. I had this thought that I would have five steaks, and then after the fifth one, I'd get back to work. Well, this weekend I cooked a brunch of steak and eggs with some "hash browns" (that is, I slice potatoes and fry them until they're done). It was gonna be great; just like the steak and eggs I used to have at ABC Restaurant as a kid. The only thing missing would be the slice-of-orange-and-parsley-sprig garnish. Well, I learned a tough lesson that day: there is such a thing as a steak that is too big for lunch. (Also, it probably helps if it hasn't been frozen for weeks and thawed in the microwave.) Also, I learned that three eggs is much more than I remember. I think the underlying lesson here is, I'm too old for this. Anyway, that one meal was just so overwhelming that I'm just going to forego the other four steaks and get back to work.

I went to see Sloan last week, the day right after this massive explosion totalled a very busy junction on the freeway. Fortunately, that meant all public transit was free, so we got to the concert without paying a dime in tolls, gas, or fares. The concert was fantastic. They played way less new material than I was expecting, and way more of their old hits. I realized then that Sloan has now become a band that could really just play their big hits (or at least big Canadian hits) for an hour and a half. (Chris said something like "Okay, thanks, now we're gonna play a few off our newest record, before we get back to the hits. Thanks for your patience." It was awesome.) Also, I realized I am now old.

What do you call a man with no arms and no legs flying through the air?

Current Music: Feist - The Reminder

1. To be fair, if you only spread the garlic on the bread and don't use all the oil/butter, it's probably not so bad for you.
2. Look, potty humour is funny, okay? I ain't got to apologize to you for that.

What's Wang This Week

Some of you have been asking if I've been blogging recently, and the answer is no. If you owned a Wii and The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, you wouldn't blog either.

I'm about 25 hours into Zelda and I'm still nowhere near done. I have been toying with the idea of just doing nothing but playing Zelda for a weekend, by the end of which I should be either done or pretty close to done. Then I could get on with my life, and spend my evenings with my newly arrived Arrested Development DVDs and with Steely Dan (the band, not the dildo).

After Vince ordered Wiimotes on Nintendo's website and they shipped well before they were supposed to, I jumped at the opportunity to end the Wii accessory hunt before it even got off the ground and did the same. I debated, because of how expensive the Wiimote+nunchuk combination is, whether or not I should get a full complement of 4 sets. In the end I decided though that since in the past I've benefitted greatly from my friends having four controllers for their GameCubes/X-Boxes/etc., this was my opportunity to give back and I should do so. I plunked down the order for 2 Wiimotes and 3 nunchuks (another Wiimote comes in February with my preordered copy of Wii Play), and despite the website saying that Wiimotes would be on backorder until Jan. 29, they arrived yesterday. I had some friends over and we put them through their paces; Super Monkey Ball really is better with three controllers.

Of course, since I forked over the cash for these controllers, I get permanent first-game privileges. Deal with it.

Besides that, work and school are busy as always. It's difficult, but I think I've managed to strike a balance between work/school and Zelda. Unfortunately, "sleep" and "nutrition" do not figure in this balance. I find myself eating a whole lot of food out of jars and plastic trays. At first I felt a little bad, but then I decided to just run with it, so when I had a big craving for crappy white-boy instant ramen the other day, I actually made a specific trip to Safeway for $2 worth of Mr. Noodles. (I justified it as my own little memorial for Momofuku Ando, inventor of the instant noodle.) Unfortunately, they didn't have any Mr. Noodles, so I had to settle for a brand called "Maruchan". (EDIT (1:35AM Jan. 28, 2007): Mr. Noodles is a Canadian brand. Who knew?) On the bright side, I got 8 packs for $1.25. Unfortunately, as it always is with instant ramen, one serving of ramen is enough to put you off ramen for an indefinite amount of time, so now I'm stuck with a bunch of ramen that I have no urge to ever eat. Fortunately, as it always is with ramen, I'll inevitably have another craving and eat them -- I'm predicting before spring break.

Gourd shot! (A record of how much better Adam is than me at squash)

The new semester has brought the return of the weekly Adam-Richard squash clash, and I have started the semester with victories in our first two matches. While this is nothing new, they are nonetheless notable because these are the first times that I have won matches against him without the benefit of him forfeiting. So, for the Spring 2007 semester, the record stands at:

Adam 3, Richard 5

Also, I've been jamming with some guys from the department. I was originally the lead singer (due to my unstoppable charisma) and bass player, but the rhythm guitar player saw an old Madness video and was inspired to play the bass, plus he convinced me that bass players shouldn't be lead singers (e.g. Sting, the dude from Winger). So, we swapped instruments. That's fine by me, because I've decided that I don't really like playing the bass that much. We call ourselves "Student's T and the Hypotheses". I'm Student's T.

Someone suggested that each member of the band choose one song that we should try to play. As the lead singer, I should probably pick something that makes me look good. Suggestions?

Current Music: Steely Dan - Babylon Sisters

What Was Wang This Month

Yeah, so I didn't write much the last four weeks. Sue me.

I was on holidays. Hooray for holidays! I spent much time with friends and family. I did some stuff. I hunted for a Wii. I bought a Wii. I lost at poker, and rather miserably, I might add. I drove to the airport all by myself for the first time. I also learned not to park at the airport for several hours if you can avoid it.

I experienced the strange weather in the Lower Mainland first-hand. I had heard about the damage at Stanley Park from the hurricane-force winds, but I wasn't expecting to see that many trees broken and blown down in my hometown Port Coquitlam. It was weird to look out at a field of trees and see 30% of them in pieces. I was sitting in the living room playing Zelda during a windstorm when I looked across the street and noticed that the tree in the yard was at a rather precarious 20 degree angle from upright. A few minutes later I looked back and noticed that it was at an even more precarious 30 degree angle from upright. This raised some concern, but then I just kept playing Zelda.

Wii = good. Wii hunting = bad. Incidentally, if any of my friends in Berkeley are reading this, if you see any Wiimotes and nunchuks on sale at normal price ($40 and $20 each), please buy one of each on the spot and I will pay you back. Think of it as helping me help you. I am looking for two Wiimotes and three nunchuks. (Incidentally, I just noticed that the URL for that post is "fucking-wii.html".)

My first day of Wii hunting was particularly frustrating, as not only did I fail to find one, I also failed to find a jar of Vegemite at Superstore which I fully expected to have Vegemite in the imported foods aisle, given that they have Tim Tams. I realized what a terrible shopper I am that day, as I failed first to find something that everybody wants, and then I failed to find something that nobody wants. Fortunately, thanks to Allan I now have a jar of Vegemite direct from Australia, and I can now say that I prefer it over the Marmite I bought at Save-On-Foods at home. My breakfast was 6 Vegemite (open-faced) sandwiches. That reminds me, I should go drink some water.

I also got sick, which cost me my voice for a few days. Actually it might have been fine but two Fridays ago instead of sleeping in and recovering all day I got up at 7:30AM to take my mom to work during the first snowfall of my holiday so I would have the car, with which I went to the mall to (futilely) hunt the elusive Wii, and then drove to the airport to see off my good friend and former roommate Brad to New Zealand (not this Brad), where he has a permanent job. This did my throat no favours, but at least I did finally get some respect from Derek for my Mario Kart skills when I managed to transfer them to an actual car and kept us from getting crashed into by an idiot driver who decided that turning into full-speed traffic at a non-intersection would be a good idea. (It was great, I slammed on the brakes, corrected the car's skidding on the slushy roads, pounded on the horn, and shook my fist at the driver all in one fluid motion. I did forget to look in the rearview as I slammed on the brakes though, which would have been bonus points. Kids, always scan the rearview every 5 seconds to keep an eye on traffic behind you.) However, my throat also cost me the opportunity to go spend the next day with Adam and a friend of his who was visiting Vancouver from Berkeley and is, reportedly, a girl.

I saw Body Worlds 3 at Science World with the LUGs and Rachel. Apparently it's a hot ticket. Who knew? I'm used to just showing up to Science World whenever I damn well feel like it. Anyway, it was interesting, morbid, disturbing, and raised some ethical questions, so I guess I got my money's worth.

When I got back to Berkeley I saw that my copy of Sloan's "Never Hear The End Of It" had come while I was away. I looked in the package and lo and behold, I got an autographed case! Turns out I was one of the first 100 people in the US to pre-order the album, so now I have all four Sloaners' autographs! Hooray for Yep-Roc! Hooray for Sloan! Hooray for autographs!

Okay I'm gonna go play Zelda now.

Current Music: The Decemberists - O Valencia!