Live Long & Prosper... Bitches!

My brother got Aiden a Spock action figure. He'd always resisted Star Trek, but on Friday night, after getting his Spock, he suggested that maybe he'd like to watch it & that the new movie looks pretty cool. W/ that in mind, we watched the 2nd pilot episode the other day & then we watched The Wrath of Khan this afternoon. (Sidebar: if you don't know why there were 2 pilots then there's nothing can do for you... you may be a lost Trek cause.) He loved the show so we'll definitely be watching more!!! He also loved the movie: he was a bit appalled by the things in Chekov's & Terrell's ears, but other than that he was into it completely. Spock's death, of course, threw him a bit but we got to talk about Christ-figures. The post-Spock's death stuff always makes me squeeze out a few tears & this time was no different. Kirk's reaction is so poignant. The whole "He's not really dead ass long as we remember him" speech... brilliant! He's already on me about III, & I can't wait to take him to the new one.

The 1 Millionth Word!

The wait is over! April 29th is upon us! It is now 12:01 AM GMT so we @ Visions of Ypsi are reading to unveil the word. It's not fantastic, but the fanfare that should go along w/ the 1 millionth word in the English language should more than make up for the seemingly uselessness word. Of course, you'll realize that it's not really useless tomorrow as you cheer for Arsenal in the Champion's League Semi-Final 1st Leg @ Old Trafford. Before wee get to the word, however, let's recap what we've done so far. Last year, The Global Language Monitor claimed that April 29th would see the creation of the 1 millionth word in English. The problematic nature of this claim is multi-faceted, but we'll ignore that for now as we look to the greater glory of English in general & Visions of Ypsi in particular. During the run-p, we coined 3 new terms: "Chimilicious," "Barack-a-lack-a-boom," & "The Westley." Now, w/o further ado, your 1 millionth word: "Arsetimistic." This is the stupid optimism one feels while knowing full-well that Arsenal won't make it past Man U in the Champions League. This is different that naive optimism because one is fully aware that the hope is useless. The game tonight (still on GMT here) will be a futile struggle as Arsenal lose 3-1. The home tie next week will probably end 1-1 sending Man U through on a 4-2 aggregate score-line. That's OK though. We'll remain Arsetimistic & assume Wenger will win the treble next year.

Here's my Arsetemistic starting line-up:
Almunia
Sagna Toure Djourou Gibbs
Song
Walcott Fabregas Nasri
van Persie Adebayor

Jean's Wedding: A River, a Pool Party, & a Ceremony

After watching the Liverpool match w/ Dan @ the continental breakfast, I took the kids down to the river for a little while. There's a really cool looking visitor's' center dating back to 1912 called The Pagoda. Unfortunately, for all the effort thy pt into restoring it in 1995, the stuff in it kind of sucked... a few model riverboats, a pilot's wheel, @ a little pamphlet rack... & tons of empty space. Other than that, the riverfront was great. It made Aiden & me want to watch Davy Crockett & the River Pirates.

When we got back to the motel, we had a little pool-side lunch party. It was a nice time, & the kids got to swim again before we headed to the wedding. About 4:45, the convoy pulled out, heading to Newburgh which is a quaint little town about 10 minutes up the river from Evansville. It was beautiful, & I can now present Mr. & Mrs. Jean & Tiffany Peltier (I'm not certain that she took the name, but the minister introduced them that way, so I will too... he was a bit wacky though, so who knows). The rest of the night went swimmingly. Aiden had a rough time because he was so tired, but Solstice boogied all night & Isaiah fell asleep on my mom... which was sooo cute.

Here are some more vaca pics for you because I know you're all waiting for them: Down by the river At the pool party Us The Groom's Family The Ceremony My Dad up & Dancing Dancing w/ my Daughter Solstice dancing

Jean's Wedding: The Drive & The Arrival

We set out from Ypsi just before 7:00 which was 20 minutes or so behind or ETD. We'd planned to leave around 6:30 because even though the drive is usually only 8ish hours, we had no idea what to expect w/ Isaiah. As it turns out, however, he's an awesome traveler, & we hit Evansville, IN about quarter to 3:00 Eastern Time. Of course, Evansville is on Central, so we had plenty of time to hit the pool & the local Cracker Barrel before the free hotel Happy Hour... yes, FREE! They have 3 free drinks for every adult between 5:30 & 7:00 every night. I had a Scotch, a Tequila Sunrise, & a Bud Light.
What we saw during the drive:
* A shit-ton of construction in Lima, OH
* Neil Armstrong's birthplace in Wapakoneta, OH
* A water tower in Franklin, OH, a city we entered just as "Franklin's Tower" began
* Some enormous trucks hauling bridge supports. One had a cab that drove down the white dotted line pulling a trailer that covered both lanes & backed up traffic on E bound I 71 for quite a while... we were on W bound so we jst got to gawk.
* Waterville, OH which is @ the same exit as Napoleon, OH but for some stupid reason is called Waterville... not Waterloo.
* An assload of dead deer... though Elizabeth claims they may have just been sunning themselves... I don't buy it. Particularly the one that looked like the dude in Predator after his chest exploded.

What we heard during the drive
* A random 80s Mix
* A second random 80s Mix
* A ridiculous Mix
* One from the Vault: Disc One (GD: 8-13-75)
* Middle Cyclone: Neko Case
* A random Country Mix that is actually sprinkled w/ a lot of singer/songwriter stuff & some Dylan covers
* Jonas Brothers: Jonas Brothers
* Shotgun Willie: Willie Nelson

What you'll see right now: Franklin's Tower Kids in the car Loaded up & truckin' Isaiah's 1st time swimming More of Isaiah's 1st time swimming... this time w/ his beautiful mother

4/20 B-Days

As you all get ready to celebrate Stephanie's b-day tomorrow, here's a little head's up about today's b-day. Bree & Liza, old friends of ours both turn the big 3-6 today & it would also be Hitler's big day if he were still alive. to top it all off... George Takei!!!

A Sports Post that is not about the FA Cup Loss Yesterday

You may remember a year ago when I gave you an overview of my Tigers. My 1st was Gibby, then Young, Jones & finally, Renteria who has now gone to the Giants. This year, The Tigers Organization has changed its marketing strategy & are no longer asking "Who's your Tiger?" Instead, they're claiming, "Always a Tiger." However, my fair-weather fandom attests to the fact that this claim is certainly fallacious. That said, I'm sticking w/ the "Who's your Tiger?" approach. I've been thinking about it for a couple weeks now & Finally made a decision. W/ Jones retired & Renteria gone to San Fransisco, it's been an agonizing decision. I considered Grandy for a while. He seems like a true athlete. He can do everything & he's even in good physical condition... someone needs to remind him it's just Baseball. Then I mulled Rodney over for a little while. He had 13 saves last year, & so far this year he has yet to give up a run. He may be on deck to become My Tiger next year. Since we've recapped all of this, w/o further ado, I give you the Visions of Ypsi 2009 Tiger: Marcus Thames.

New Words

You may recall my promise to bring new & improved words to the English language this year during the run-up to April 29, the day The Global Language Monitor claims English will see it's 1 millionth word. It's still unclear to me (mainly because I haven't really taken the time to read much about it) what their criteria are & whether they count words that are no longer in use, but in order to help them along... & be the first to post the 1 millionth word @ 12:01 AM GMT, we @ Visions of Ypsi are doing our best. In December, we came correct w/ "Chimilicious." It hasn't caught on quite as quickly as I'd hoped, but I still use it quite often, so only time will tell. In January, we saw the debut of the 2nd word, "Barack-a-lack-a-boom." This concept has recently fallen by the weigh-side as people are less & less enamoured w/ Obama, but I'm sure it's still useful... & will certainly become important as people look back @ his campaign & the beginning of his presidency.W/ this in mind, before we come to the final day of our exciting countdown, I've got 1 more word to bring you. It's not a neologism per se, but it's a new usage for an older verbal utterance: "The Wesley." Named after everyone's least favorite character on Star Trek TNG, this is the term for an episode of a television series w/ a focus on an annoying character. This phenomenon happens often on shows w/ ensemble casts like Lost or ER. Be sure to check back @ 12:01 AM on April 29th for the 1 millionth word in the English Language!!!

RIP Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick

Odd timing when considered in relation to the Amazon.com situation this week. I 1st read Epistemology of the Closest in Grad School & have returned to it over the years whenever I've needed a refresher before teaching Melville, Wilde or James... or just whenever I needed to refresh my theory stuff in general. She was a good person.
The obit in The Nation is fantastic.
The New Yorker obit is brief but nice also.
The obit in The Advocate is brief and a bit cold, but interesting none-the-less.

I could write a sonnet about your Easter Bonnet!

Jay & Silent Bob kick the Easter Bunny's ass!


Ming the Merciless IS Jesus! (Dig the less than under-stated voice-over intro)
A little something for all of us who love a showtune!

Recent Books

I just finished The Mark of Zorro (formerly The Curse of Capistrano) by Johnston McCully. As a fan of old adventure stories & of the old films/serials based upon those stories, I'd wanted to read it for a long time. When I worked @ Borders 10 years ago, however, it was out of print so I had to wait patiently for the day it got picked up again. Well, I found it a few weeks ago & thought I'd give it a shot... maybe a mistake. The book kind of sucks, but it is supposedly the 1st to have a masked hero. (I'd though The Scarlet Pimpernel was older, but apparently that dude wasn't really a masked hero w/ an alter ego.) Coming to the book w/ full knowledge that Zorro & don Diego are & the same makes it impossible to read like the audience in 1919. It must have been something in a world w/o Bruce Wayne, Clark Kent, or Peter Parker to read that for the 1st time. I kept trying to figure out when those readers would 1st be able to tell that they're the same, but it's a hard thing to do. He isn't unmasked until the last few pages, but of course even the back of the book explains who he is. I can't imagine it would have been that was originally though. McCully does a nice job of dropping hint, but people might not get them w/o the history. I think I was supposed to be surprised when his mask came off.

Since I finished it yesterday, I started Sharpe's Rifles. The movies w/ Sean Bean are really good (as far as low-budget made for BBC movies go), but reading a series isn't my thing so I've been putting them off for a few years. If I could access my "Chain Reading Profile," I'd recommend this book though. I'm only 30 pages into it & it's already definitely better than The Mark of Zorro.

A couple weeks ago, I read The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brien. It's fuckin' good! Someone @ Nicola's recommended it, but I'd never heard of it before. Or @ least I didn't think I had. As it turns out, it's mentioned in a couple episodes of Lost, & w/ good reason. It's clearly influential on the producers of that show. A dude kills a guy for a box of cash, waits 3 years to get it, then finds out the money is gone & spends the next 200 pages in a weird 2D police station w/ a couple cops who can stop time w/ some weird room down a road that can only be found by reading the tiny cracks in the ceiling like a map of the county. READ IT!

Adebayor v Villareal 4-7-09

I didn't get a chance to watch the 2nd half yesterday, but after reading about the goal, I searched around a bit to finally find it. I hope it stays up for a while because it's not giving me the option to DL it 7 all the other highlight videos have already been taken down. It's a sweet sweet goal!

Tartan Day & 2 Woody Allen Movies

Tartan Day, the little known Scottish cousin of St. Patrick's Day, is today. It seems like St. Andrew's Day would be more apropos for this type of holiday than today, but April 6th is the anniversary of The Declaration of Arbroath, the date of Scottish Independence in 1320. A strange date to celebrate considering Scottish independence came & went more times than I could ever count since then, but it's the day none-the-less. To celebrate, I wore my McPherson tie to class this morning... & you should do that too. And then maybe eat some Haggis or have a wee nip of the single malt. In other celebratory news, Braveheart was on last night so we watched a few battles w/ Aiden before he went to bed. He claimed he was going to be bored to death, but as soon as limbs went a'flyin' he perked up & realized it might be a sweet movie. After they went to bed, we watched Vicky Christina Barcelona, the newest of the Woody Allen films. I don't think it was quite as good as his previous film, Cassandra's Dream, but it was good none-the-less, & neither the presence of Scarlet Johansson nor the presence of Penelope Cruz ruined it the way I feared. I don't know if Cruz deserved the Oscar, but it's definitely the best film I've ever seen her in. The other thing about the film is that it returns to a traditional Woody Allen feel that Cassandra's Dream lacks, namely the basic Woody Allen dialogue. Cassandra's Dream focuses instead on a darker weirdness that he uses less frequently (but is seen in Match Point, Interiors & September). And Woody Allen... WTF??? The dude has written & directed a film a year for going on 40 years. He's a prolific mother fucker.

Water Tower Story in the Echo

Check out this great April Fools Day article from The Eastern Echo. Who knew they were so clever?

You Talkin' to Me?

If you're like me & you have a pile of old cassettes sitting around w/o a player or even the desire to acquire a player (because all those old GD shows are available on-line w/ better quality or because Slick Rick doesn't really hold up after 20 years the way you thought he would when you were in high school, this dude has come up w/ a solution to your problems. When life gives you outdated technology, make outdated technology-ade!