SNL

Here's a site that I had forgotten about: Saturday Night Live Transcripts.

A few of my favorite sketches:

Grayson-Moorhead

Neil Diamond Storytellers

The Census

My Keychain

For the last week, my keys have rattled mourningly in my pocket. My keychain has died.

It was the only keychain that I've ever used, a leather catcher's mitt giving to me in second grade by my friends Andrew and Ally. I had it for eighteen years. But on Saturday, the last threads holding the keyring tore and my keys fell to the floor. I searched for a leather loop to reattach the ring to, as I have in similar cases many times over the years, but this time the search was in vain. There was nothing left. So I left the mitt on the kitchen counter and have taken my keys to work alone all week. My pocket feels naked without my mitt - when I stick my hand in, no longer do I feel the comforting leather of the keychain, but only the cold metal of the keys.

I miss my keychain, and I don't know how I can replace it.

Continuity

I came across this wonderful essay on continuity in science fiction written by a scientist. Enjoy. :)

SFGate

So I read the San Francisco Chronicle's website, SFGate.com, on a daily basis to keep up with news from my hometown. Generally, I like the Chronicle (even if all of the snobbish intellectual-types in California are always complaining how, really, it sucks compared to, I guess, the New York Times or whatever). However, they have a few columnists who really get my goat, including this jerk, who only appears on their website. Near as I can tell, he's one of those people who thinks that he's the only guy in the world who knows what's up - that people in power lie, that religious folks are all suckers, that pop culture is vapid. He doesn't argue points, he just denigrates whatever he doesn't like. Note the approving quotes on his page about how awesome and one-of-a-kind he is.

His column today is basically about how Star Wars sucks, George Lucas sucks, Star Wars nerds suck, and basically the movies are just crap for little boys. Now, I disagree with all of this, but that's not the point. The point is that he writes this as if, y'know, he's the first person to notice that the emperor has no clothes, as if all sorts of people haven't been saying the same things about the prequels for years now. And as if it really takes balls to attack Star Wars nerds, a universally loathed subculture (are there any subcultures that aren't universally loathed, come to think of it?).

Anyway, I've just always hated people like him (I knew too many of them in college), who seem to think that their drivel is so totally original.

Music Addiction

So I've been thinking lately about what it's like being a music fan, and I realized that it really borders on addiction, at least for me. That is, I always want more cds, thinking "I'll just get these ones, and that will be enough," except that it's never enough. Once I actually buy and listen to some new cds, it isn't more than a few days before I move on to wanting something else. And then I sorta feel bad, like I should have enjoyed and appreciated the ones I just bought more.

A big part of this is the law of diminishing returns. Those first cds in your collection you cherish and listen to a hundred times, day after day. But once your collection spans the hundreds or the thousands, you can't listen to any one cd that often. So, you go out and get that new cd by that new cool indie band. And you listen, and y'know, it's a smart, tight, finely-crafted pop album consisting of excellent 3-4 minute songs. But you don't love it (there are exceptions, of course). Not the way you loved those first cds. So you listen a half-dozen times, memorize a handful of the lyrics, and move on.

But then, of course, you have to keep buying - because there's always more good music coming out, and you have to keep up with all the new hot bands, and of course, with the old hot bands, too (until they pull an R.E.M. and start sucking). So you get suckered into being a completist - you need every band, and everything by every band. But it's still not enough.

In the end, I think this pattern of addiction can be attributed to Nick Hornby's observation in Songbook that, really, a pop song isn't that complicated and there's only so many times you can listen to one before you "get" it. After that, you have to move on. That's why it's always so exhilarating when you listen to an old song and discover something new - you've successfully squeezed blood from a stone, as it were. But once you become a real fan, you devour songs faster and faster. You're more skilled at picking out the important bits, and discerning the trash from the treasure. And then more music is needed.

Anyway, given this pattern, I've always just been happy that I'm able to fend it off a bit, as it were. I try hard not to give in to the temptation to buy every cd, and to become a fan of every new cool band. I content myself with really liking the first two Shins albums, but not bothering to buy the first two Interpol albums. Is Interpol good? Probably (everyone says so). But it's not worth the time, money, and effort to find out. Perhaps if I were rich, I wouldn't feel constrained this way, but somehow I don't think I'll ever have that problem.

Some Stuff I've Read Recently

So I ended up a bit disappointed by Slate's history week, especially the conversation between Ravitch and Wiener that just sorta ... ended. Thud. And most of the articles on specific topics just weren't very gripping. But that's the problem with history - most stuff that doesn't relate to your field of interest is boring. For instance, in grad school, I had a couple articles published in the school history journal. But when the issues actually came out, mine were the only articles I was interested in reading (and I bet most of the other contributors felt the same way).

Anyway, there was one stand-out history article at Slate - David Greenberg's two-part essay (here's part one and part two) on the difficulty of bridging the gap between academic and popular history writing. Academic writing tends to be dull, jargon-ladened, and obsessed by topics that no one cares about (see the paragraph above). Popular writing, on the other hand, often lacks original research or any familiarity with preceding work in the same field (historiography). Greenberg's suggestion, then, is to marry accessible writing on interesting topics with solid historiography. He cites Gordon Wood's The Radicalism of the American Revolution (a book I loved) as a prime example of this style of history. Here's to hoping that historians in and out of academia follow Greenberg's advice.

Finally, today I read an interesting article on gender-imbalance in Asia. The economist Amartya Sen has argued that this imbalance is caused by the misogyny of Chinese, Indian, et al. societies and the resultant neglect and infanticide of females. However, as the article details, Emily Oster has discovered that a large part of the disparity can be explained by the high incidence of Hepatitis B in Asia, which for unknown reasons, causes women carriers of the disease to be more likely to give birth to boys than girls.

Torture and Idealism

So the whole Newsweek story has been done to death this week, but I feel like I should say something on the topic, at least obliquely. First of all, let me acknowledge that Newsweek made a serious journalistic error, and their retraction was necessary. Second, they should not be held responsible for the rioting and death that followed - that was the work of fanatics, and the news media shouldn't be in the business of censoring itself for fear of causing morons to overreact. Third, given what we know about what has occurred in U.S. prisons (free registration required), right-wing self-righteous anger at Newsweek is a little like a murderer getting angry that his indictment wrongly claims he ran a red-light during the crime.

The broader point about this topic, and what makes it so painful and frustrating for a hawkish liberal internationalist like myself, is that I believe in much of what President Bush says, but his inability to live up to his ideals is maddening. I supported the war in Iraq because, ultimately, it meant ridding the world of a brutal, sadistic, genocidal regime. I believe that all peoples deserve to live in democratic states, or more realistically, at least in moderately free republics. So Bush's declared aim of holding every state in the world to a democratic standard - something the United Nations has been astoundingly bad at - is one I wholeheartedly agree with.

But whether or not President Bush believes in one standard for all, his actions belie this believe. He is rightly horrified by torture, but he makes excuses, covers up, and refuses to hold anyone accountable when it is practiced by our own troops (not just torture - murder, too). He even absurdly claimed in his latest press conference that we never knowingly render suspected terrorists to regimes that practice torture - as if Egyptian, Syrian, and Uzbek prisons were best known for their lengthy massages and world-class spa facilities. Bush also campaigns against nuclear proliferation while our military engages in research on smaller and more useful nukes (as if we could even use such a thing without all sorts of legal, diplomatic, military, and economic fallout, in addition to the, y'know, radioactive fallout).

In short, George Bush is, at times and on certain foreign policy issues, a hypocrite (note: I did not call him, nor do I believe that he is, a liar). So why do I support him on some issues? Well, because while I can imagine my ideal President, that's not the guy we've got (nor will we ever have him). So I support Bush at times, knowing that I'll be disappointed, but that some good may come of it, too. Besides, better a half-hearted democratizer like Bush than someone who doesn't believe in democratizing at all, like Cheney or Rumsfeld (that, by the way, is why they cannot reasonably be considered neo-conservatives - they're just plain conservatives).

Star Wars

So Annie and I saw Episode III last night, proving how big of nerds we are. This was undoubtedly the best of the prequels, even if there were a few scenes that I think should have been done differently. But that's the inherent difficulty of making a movie where people already know the ending. (And really, isn't this why so many people think that Episodes I-II sucked? Because they sat there in the theater saying "No, that scene didn't live up to my preconceived notions - I would have done X instead.")

I don't want to give anything away, but I will say this: 1) Episode I was totally superfluous - almost nothing from the plot of that movie is necessary to advance the story in Episodes II-III, and 2) Lucas' inability to write a convincing love story hurts the prequels as a whole.

Finally, over at Slate they have a discussion between the two biggest Star Wars nerds on their staff (yes, I read Slate a lot). Anyway, several parts of the discussion struck me as inaccurate, but this section was waaay off:

And while I'm on the subject, is there anything Obi-Wan Kenobi tells Luke Skywalker at the beginning of Star Wars that turns out to be true? ... He says Luke's father was a great pilot. These prequels give us no real evidence for that.... He says that he fought with Luke's father in the
Clone Wars. If that's true, it's sure hard to tell.

Um? Did this guy watch the prequels? Anakin is several times shown to be a great pilot (that's the whole point of the dumb pod-racing sequence in Episode I). And as for Obi-Wan and Anakin fighting in the Clone Wars together - um, the Clone Wars are all of the fighting in Episodes II-III, and they certainly do a lot of it, side-by-side. That's why Obi-Wan is at times referred to as General Kenobi - because they're fighting a war.

Okay, nerdiness will now come to an end (until my next post, that is).

History Lessons

The continuing debate between Jon Wiener and Diane Ravitch at Slate regarding how to teach history is quite interesting.

One specific thing that struck me the other day, however, was this point from Ravitch, rebutting Wiener's claim that it is most important to teach "the conflicts":

If you don't know the central events and players—the central narrative—it is
difficult to understand the views and behaviors that diverge from the central
narrative. How can you teach "multiple perspectives" when students don't know
what happened in the first instance?

I found this interesting most of all because I made almost the exact point in an intro-level history class at UC Santa Cruz. The professor had structured the class as a series of debates about American history, and made sure to focus on the perspectives of minorities, women, dissidents, etc. But I found that what happened was that the students who already knew the history participated in the discussions, while the students who didn't already know the history were lost, because the professor spent almost zero time on the basic narrative.

Now, in fairness to Professor Yang-Murray, these were students who had, like all California students, already taken American history in 5th, 8th, and 11th grades. They should have known the basic narrative well enough to move deeper into the material. So the failure was really at the elementary and secondary level, which I think is the point Ravitch was trying to get across. You can't expect sophisticated historical analysis from students who had the basketball coach as their history teacher in high school.

My Brother, Part 2

So my brother had this to say in an email:

You know Jake, you're not a geek for writing so much about Star Trek and history
on your blog, you're a geek for HAVING a blog.

Yeah, well if blogging is so geeky, then why does Matt have this blog? Riddle me that, Batman!

More Star Trek

Okay, my newfound Star Trek obsession has become a running joke, but this post about the end of Star Trek is really good. Lileks does a great job of summing up most of my feelings about the show.

History Week

So Slate has a number of history-themed articles this week, which is cool, because while history is hardly ignored in the media, it's rare to see discussions like this one between Diane Ravitch and Jon Wiener about the kind of things that historians actually discuss and worry about.

I haven't had a chance yet to read all of the articles (so I'm sure I'll post more later), but this line in Ravitch's post today struck me:

In no other subject do a majority of students register so little knowledge of a
subject taught in school.

I know that American students have for years and years scored low in history, but somehow I never realized it was so bad. Partly this is because I just can't wrap my head around the idea that the average American has more knowledge of math or science than history. Maybe that's just because history has always come easily for me, and I just sort of assumed that it was easy for everyone else (at least relatively speaking).

Seriously, what subject could be easier? There's little jargon, no computation, and much of the material is stuff that people already know and have opinions about (George Washington, the Civil War, Hitler, etc.). Your average intelligent person, I've always figured, would be far more able to carry on a conversation about World War II than the Pythagorean Theorem. This has even caused me to think, at times, that my degree in history is really no big deal because, come on, anyone can do history - it takes a genius to do biochemistry.

But apparently, my assumptions were wrong. People really do have trouble with history, and I'm not sure why.

British Election

As I'm sure that everyone knows, Tony Blair and the Labour Party won their third straight election last week in Great Britain. I was looking at this map shortly after the election, and I was struck by the similarities and differences between Britain and the U.S. Though the colors are reversed, the map looks strikingly like that of the U.S. - a sea of one color (in this case, blue for the Conservatives), with little bits of the other (red for Labour). Like the U.S., the countryside is heavily conservative, and the cities are mostly liberal. Also similar to the U.S., the percentages don't necessarily translate neatly into the share of power. In the U.S., a slight Republican majority nationwide has translated into a solid Republican majority in all branches of government, meaning that the government as a whole is far less equivocal than the electorate. In Britain, this is even more pronounced, as Labour's 35.2% victory translates into an electoral landslide of 356 seats (55% of the total).

But the differences are striking as well. First of all, despite a winner-take-all system like our House of Representatives (as opposed to a proportional system, like in other parliamentary systems), there are more than two parties. The Liberal Democrats, notably, captured 22% of the vote, with smaller parties getting another 10.5% - accounting for 92 seats. This is partly explained, looking again at the map, by regional differences. Note that the Conservatives won only a single seat in Scotland, for instance, while the local Scottish National Party won 6 seats. Second, whereas in the U.S, the equality of representation of states in the Senate and gerrymandering in the House favor rural (and therefore conservative) areas, in Britain this is reversed. London alone, for instance, accounts for 74 seats, and other urban areas are similarly overrepresented, which helps to explain the dominance of Labour.

Anyway, if you're inclined to look at Britain as a sort of Bizarro version of the U.S., except with a different language, then these election results would tend to confirm that belief.

Jason

My friend, Jason Lefler, who I've known since middle school and who I roomed with in college, has started a travel blog. I've added it to my blog list. Jason's a lot like me, except with a far more intricate sense of humor, and a far more sophisticated taste for wine. I wholeheartedly recommend his posts, even if they don't seem to make sense sometimes.

My Brother the Ump

So here's a picture of my brother Matt umpiring a 4th grade youth baseball game in San Francisco - which is totally cool.

Thing is, I was looking at this picture and I realized that, even though Matt is kneeling, he's a head taller than the catcher. I remember playing baseball at that age, and I guess I didn't realize at the time just how young and little we all still were. I mean, I felt pretty grown-up already at the ripe old age of 10. :) I guess I'll chalk this up as another one of those things where your perception changes a lot as you get older.

Computer Problems

So we're having computer problems today at work, which means that I basically can't do anything right now, because the program which is down is the one I use all day long. You'd think this would be cool, right? But actually, it's pretty annoying, because I have stuff to do, but all I can do is sit here and watch it pile up. Internet access is working fine, but then I don't just want to sit here surfing because the system could come back up at any moment. So I keep rechecking every few minutes to see if things work, but of course they don't.

Thing is, when I'm normally goofing off, I know that I can just go right back to working at a moment's notice, should anyone walk into the room or whatever. But now, I can't even pretend to look busy, because there's nothing to do. So I'm just afraid someone will be all "Wait, why are you posting to your blog from work?" and I'll be all "Uh ... cause I like cheating the company out of money?"

Paper

So, I got an A on this paper, which is good, because I don't have to take the final in the class now! Yay!

Enterprise

So tonight was the final episode of Star Trek: Enterprise, as well as the last Star Trek episode ever! (Actually, I'm betting that they take a few years off until interest builds up again and then bring back a new show.)

Anyway, like all series finales, it was bittersweet. I think overall it was well done, and the addition of Riker and Troi gave a nice sense of continuity with the other series. I always liked Riker, and I think Jonathan Frakes plays the character very well. What really annoys me about the finale, however, is that they killed off Trip, and frankly, they seemed to have done it simply because, well, it's a finale and so someone has die, right? I mean, they did give him a heroic death, but it seemed pretty pointless - they've gotten out of lots more dangerous situations without anyone dying. And except for T'Pol, no one in the crew really seemed that upset over his death. Also, his death wasn't even a surprise, since Troi gave it away earlier in the episode. All in all, poorly done.

Anyhow, like I said, all finales are bittersweet, but I think they could have done this one better. Oh well, I guess it's an appropriate finale for a show that never lived up to expectations.

Blind or Deaf?

So for the past month or so now, I've been partially deaf in my right ear (only in the higher frequencies). The worst part, actually, is that since only one ear is effected, it's very hard to judge the direction a sound is coming from. This has got me thinking once again about that eternal question - would you rather be deaf or blind?

Deaf means means that if you want to communicate, you'll have to learn a foreign language or learn to read lips. It also means no more music (ack!), and difficulty with all sorts of things that other people take for granted (imagine crossing a street if you can't hear any oncoming vehicles).

Blind, however, means not seeing your family and friends. It means that you won't be able to detect body language when people are speaking to you. It means that every time you walk into a new room, you'd have to survey it and mentally map it out. It means that movies, photographs, and television would be a lot less fun. Worst of all, imagine trying to cross a street if you can't see the oncoming vehicles!

Anyway, despite my new familiarity with partial deafness (which is annoying, trust me), I still think that blindness would be worse. Anyone else have an opinion?

UPDATE: If my loyal readers (all three of you?) will permit me another Star Trek reference, Annie took the Kobayashi Maru route in answering this question. (Kobayashi Maru was a no-win scenario used to train Starfleet cadets in the fact that life sucks sometimes. Kirk beat the scenario by cheating.)

Evidence that the End is Nigh ...

In a way, I find this heartening (free registration required). But in another way, I find it ridonculous. I mean, this would have been literally unthinkable 10 years ago.

Pledge of Allegiance

Last night I turned in my paper on the constitutionality of the Pledge of Allegiance, which I had been working on for the last several days. Read it here, if you've got nothing else to do.

UPDATE: Okay, I think I fixed the link. If it still doesn't work, I'll try something else.

UPDATE 2: Um, the link seemed to work earlier, and now it doesn't. Damn Yahoo Briefcase. So now I've changed it so that the link goes to the Shared Documents folder in my Briefcase, rather than directly to the file itself. I hope that will work.

Work, Grr

So I'm having an annoying day at work. A couple days ago, my boss handled something that I usually do, but only finished half of it, and then left the remaining part for me. But she didn't tell me this, and instead just put it on a checklist. I didn't see it till the next day, and then had to scrabble to get it fixed. So I mentioned this to her today, as sort of a "could you inform me if you do that again" thing, but instead, she tells me that I'll just have to check the list more often. *sigh* So now I have to check this list twice a day on the off chance that she puts something there.

Then this afternoon, we had a funny smell coming out of a drain pipe in the floor. The maintenance guy said it was sewer gases, but that pouring some water down the drain every once in a while would keep the gas trap in the drain working. So I emailed this to my boss, who apparently got very angry that the building wasn't going to fix it and emailed several people to express her displeasure, including the woman who acts as liaison to building maintenance. The liaison then came downstairs and scolded me for getting her in trouble, because I apparently misunderstood the maintenance guy (or rather the maintenance guy wasn't clear). So then I had to email my boss and retract what I had said. Grr.

UPDATE: This morning, a secretary asked me to find her a file, but provided me with only the client's name. I found the file and brought it to her. A little later, she said that there was supposed to be a second part, and asked that I find that, which I did. She then asked why I didn't find that one this morning. I explained that the two parts were in different places, and I didn't do a more thorough search until she asked. She then replied "Interesting. In the future, it probably would be best to check both places just in case. :)" Yeah, well maybe next time you could bother to tell me that I'm looking for two files! Or bother to give me more than just a name! Y'know, I don't need someone else telling me how to do my job.

Best High Schools

So Newsweek decided to create a list of the best high schools in the country. But when I looked at the list, I noticed that my high school - consistently rated highly on other lists - was nowhere to be found. Well, their rules specifically excluded magnet schools (see question 6), which strikes me as odd. Isn't that a little like doing a list of the best colleges, but excluding Ivy League schools because they have an unfair prestige advantage? And that's not the only problem they had with their methodology. Proving once again that these sort of lists are really mostly about bragging rights.

Star Trek

So apparently I'm a big enough Star Trek geek that I found this hilarious (free registration required).

Wow, that's two Star Trek references in under a week. I guess I really am a geek.

Russia

So, while this might not measure up to the enormity of Weezer's decline, I thought I'd mention that the stories I've read and pictures I've seen from the 60th Anniversary of V-E Day are not painting a pretty picture of Russia's status. The picture accompanying this article, in particular, is a tad disturbing - numerous Russian schoolchildren carrying pictures of Stalin. The sacrifices endured by the Soviet Union and its people during World War II were immense beyond human comprehension, but lionizing the leader who inflicted equally immense suffering on those same people hardly seems an appropriate way to honor their memory. It also reinforces the haunting suspicion that some (subscription required) have expressed that Vladimir Putin may be slowly transforming himself into the latest in a long line of Russian autocrats. Oh well, Russia tried democracy for 10 years and it didn't work so well (the country's economy is now equal to Los Angeles county), so back to another 1000 years of autocracy.

UPDATE (5/10/05): This op-ed in today's New York Times makes much the same point - honoring the Soviet Union's victory does not require honoring Stalin and covering-over his numerous crimes.

Weezer

So I know I'm a relative newcomer to Weezer fandom (I didn't own the Blue Album until 2001) and that this is only one review, but still, I'm disappointed to learn/realize that Weezer sucks now. The Green Album was overall decent, a solid B in my book, but Maladroit was lousy, with the exception of a handful of songs. I was hoping that the latest album would prove that Maladroit was just a fluke. But what I've heard and read suggests that the new album really blows. And so we must enforce the R.E.M. rule - one bad album is a fluke, a second consecutive bad album after a career of stellar material means that I'm not wasting any more money on you.

C'est la musique. Le sigh.

Accents

So I recently purchased the self-titled debut album by The Futureheads, which I'm enjoying very much (read a review here). The band is (to my mind) a cross between the hyperactivity of The Clash and the vocal harmonizing of The Who, with a dash of the weirdness of Devo. If you like The Clash's first album you'll probably like The Futureheads.

But anyway, on my favorite track on the album, there's a line about "Your hounds of lovin'." Except that the lead singer, being British (not sure where from, though), pronounces the word loovin, which sounds both cool and strange at the same time. And that got me thinking about accents, and how arbitrary they are. That is, no one accent or dialect of a language is any more correct than the others (if you don't agree, read The Power of Babel by John McWhorter) - an Englishman saying loov is no more correct than an American saying luv (which means that we should all take dictionary pronunciation guides with a grain of salt). We only perceive certain dialects/accents as correct/incorrect, nice/sloppy, high-class/low-class due to various social, economic, political, and historical reasons. (Think about it, their respective accents are part of the reason John Kerry is seen as a blowhard and George Bush as a nincompoop.)

The further strange thing about accents is that you don't perceive your own accent (at least I don't - I can't speak for others). That is, as far as I can tell, I speak perfectly unaccented normal English and I'm sure all Scotsmen, Australians, and Jamaicans think the same thing. My best experience with this phenomenom was when my friends and I met a couple South African girls who thought the way Americans pronounce "water" was hilarious. And I had never thought of it before, but it's true that Americans pronounce it wad-ur while others pronounce it wah-ter. Again, neither is more correct, but it struck me as odd that such a simple and common word would and could have two completely separate pronunciations (and yet it led to no barrier in communication). Language is fascinating that way.

Doctors

There's a scene in Star Trek IV (the one where they go back in time to 1986 San Francisco) where Dr. McCoy makes a comment about how 20th Century doctors are still in the Dark Ages, cutting open people's heads to fix hemmorages. It's funny because, of course, brain surgery is considered very cutting edge at this point in history, especially compared 150+ years ago, when surgery was really more of a pre-mortem autopsy, a nice little anatomy lesson for the physicians. But it's a nice reminder that, while we've come a long way in medicine and surgery, there's a long way to go (really, that applies to many/most fields of study).

Anyway, I say this as a prelude to my follow-up appointment today with the otolaryngologist. Thanks to sophisticated audio tests, blood tests, and an MRI, they are able to tell that I have hearing loss in one ear (but only in the high ranges), and they are able to rule out a number of potential causes. But they are not able to pinpoint the exact cause of my problem. In a hundred years, they'll probably laugh at the primitive audio tests and MRIs. And if I lived in 2105, they'd have my hearing back to normal. Oh well. I guess I'll just have to sit back and wait for progress. :)

Waiting

So I'm still sitting here at work because Annie is stuck in traffic on her way to get me. Traffic in downtown Milwaukee has been pretty bad for the last six months or so, and will continue for a few years, because they're completely overhauling the major freeway interchange downtown.

The good news for me, however, is that I take the bus to and from work most days (partly because I like it and partly because I'm the last American left without a driver's license). So I don't have to sit glued to the traffic reports all the time (NEWSFLASH: There's a slowdown on I-94, and I-43, and I-894, and Highway 45).

First Post

So I finally broke down and started a blog at the prodding of my wife, the lovely Annie. I'm not really sure what I plan to blog about, but I'd guess that I should be able to come up with a random thought or two on a daily basis. Or, y'know, I'll lose interest in a week or so. Whichever.