The universe is like a palindrome, only not

This weekend was spent not skydiving, which was not awesome. Also, I didn't properly install a dvd-rom in my friend's computer, which, following my Windows installation debacle, was not a good indicator of my success in computer science. I didn't not lend my laptop as a loaner until I got her computer fixed, which wasn't annoying until I remembered that I downloaded the entirety of season five of 24 to my laptop. (Dude, Peter Weller's in it. If I had known Peter "Coolest Man Alive" Weller was in it, Dave "Second Coolest Man Alive" Bushnell would have watched it from the first episode.)

**crazy overenthusiastic use of negatives ends here **

I had lunch with a friend, whom I told my old old old joke that still gets a surprising amount of play: "My grandfather is David P. Bushnell, my father is David A. Bushnell, and I'm David Y. Bushnell. If it starts with Grandpa, it's P-A-Y. If it starts with me, it's YAP."

It wasn't until my walk home from lunch that I realized how brilliant my grandfather was. He set up a joke and waited 43 years for me to deliver the punchline. And the thing is, it can't be duplicated by me. What word starting with Y can describe me, which when spelled backward will also describe my son/grandson/great-grandson? What word? No word, that's what word.

And my grandfather has an entry on Wikipedia. Brilliant, Bene Gesserit-like joke construction, an entry on Wikipedia, and the weather didn't stop him from skydiving. I bet he'd have had problems with that dvd-rom, though. Having hardware fail under Windows is the great equalizer.

News wrap-up

I completely suck at installing Windows. That's the bad news.

The good news is I completely rock at laying out a student newspaper.

The lame news is that the ad manager was upset with us because we didn't put color on the cover.

The bite-me news is that the only color he gave us was an orange spot color. (The pull quote for the bite-me news is "If you want color on the cover, give us a color that doesn't suck.")

The funny news is that the printer called him at 1:30 in the morning to ask if it was intentional that the cover had no color.

The poetic justice news is that maybe this wouldn't have happened if he hadn't taken Monday off.

The copyright-infringement news is that we played Europe's "The Final Countdown" to celebrate FTP'ing our first paper to the printer, but I can't share that song with you because it was bought off iTunes and thus DRM'ed up the ass.

The news-never-ends news is that I ought to finish this up and go try to install Windows again.

The ironic news is that I'm a computer science major and a complete klutz, yet can probably install windows with less trouble than I have installing Windows. (This story is continued in the capitalization-is-important news section.)

Mothers Day stinks.

Mothers Day stinks, and here's why:

1) It's on a Sunday, so moms can't get cards (or in my mom's case, a check for a new lawnmower + 50%) in the mail unless it's to arrive the day before or the day after, which takes some of the fun out of it.

2) The only mother-related song I have is Thirston Howl III's "I Still Live With My Moms", so last night I FTP'ed it to my site in preparation for linking to it today. Much like my thing with the mail, it didn't make sense to link to it last night, as last night was not Mothers Day; it was Mothers Eve. As we all know, Mothers Eve is a totally different holiday -- it's like the difference between Halloween (ghosts) and All Hallows Day (saints), or like the difference between Holy Thursday (a big supper with your pals) and Good Friday (getting nailed to a cross). I'm not exactly sure what the tradition is for Mothers Eve, but I'll take suggestions while I try to think of something.

3) This isn't really 3; I'm using it because 2 got derailed. And this isn't anything either, merely a smoke break so we can continue 2 in 4, which is what 2 would have been if it hadn't gone off the tracks.

4) So yeah, I was going to post "I Still Live With My Moms" by Thirston Howl III, but then I saw that Station Manager Ken had already posted it to the WFMU blog. He's got the entire WFMU library at his disposal, and he chooses to post the one song that I was going to post. That's another reason why [this] Mothers Day stinks.

5) To be fair, the only reason I have that Thirston Howl song is because it came on a compilation from an FMU dj, but still ...

6) Enjoy the song.

Ah, love

I'm reading a thread on the Something Awful forums titled "Most depressing song?" I'm into page two of the thread (and nobody's mentioned Neutral Milk Hotel's "Holland 1945" yet!) when I came upon this and realized that I may not be the nerdiest man alive:

OK, this one's kind of a stretch but I have to nominate Johnny Cash's cover of "Deliah's Gone," because my girlfriend made the very convincing argument that if you really listen, it could also be about having to kill your wife after she turns into a zombie (we're both tragic zombie nerds). The first night we slept together I spent about an hour lying awake thinking about the prospect of having to kill her if she ever turned. I know, it's stupid, but I had just lost my virginity and my brain was still all screwy.
But anyway, whenever I hear "Deliah's Gone" I think about having to shoot my zombified girlfriend in the face.

Best 2 hours I've spent in ages

Let me just say that my title of "King of Saskatoon" may be replaced by "Handsomest Man in Saskatoon." I suppose it's possible to string them all together, or maybe just use the initials, eg "Dave Bushnell, K.O.S., H.M.I.S."

Those of you who work in cubicles and/or have birthdays coming up will soon know what I'm talking about. Er, if I have your mailing address, that is.

And because I can't lay off the copyright infringement crack pipe, here's how I've been feeling since September. Or maybe August. (Actually a reasonably sized download this time!)

ah, foo

Last night I did a really good impression of "Andre the Giant plays the Genie in Aladdin", and now I can't remember how I did it.

Go, [sports team]!

I've been really horrible at posting lately. I've got three drafts sitting around, waiting to be finished and posted, but they don't seem worthwhile.

You know what is worthwhile, though? Method and Red (right-click and save as, yo). If a no-talent like Jim Belushi can star in a low-rated suburban sitcom, why not one of the Wu-Tang Clan? And why not expand the term "special guest star" to include Kenny Loggins and Chaka Khan?

Looking at Method and Red, I develop a new respect for the Fox tv network. (Not to be confused with a new respect for the Fox News network; they're beyond respectability -- though if Fox News started showing reruns of Method and Red, we'd have to talk.) People complain about Fox cancelling offbeat, low-rated shows without giving them a chance, but there's something to be said about following a show for three/six/twelve episodes before it disappears.

At least these shows existed (however briefly), and we had a chance to see them (however rarely), and then they disappeared before they could go from to awesome to bad (Pasadena) or from bad to really bad (The Tick). It's sort of like that great little restaurant in your neighborhood; you go a couple of times, add it to the list of places where you want to have a wedding reception, and then it closes. It's too bad, but you'll forever have fond memories of those awesome souvlaki pitas.

Yes, I do consider souvlaki pitas to be acceptable for a wedding reception. Yes, I remain unmarried. No, I do not see a correlation.

Oh, speaking of "correlation" -- this week's Wonder Showzen was amazing. The puppets say they've run out of money to put on the show, so they go to Chinatown and buy a Wonder Showzen knock-off called Wondur Showzen/Showzin/Showzoo/Showzey (the knock-offs don't seem preoccupied with consistency). Eventually, the original puppets get annoyed of being ripped off (even though they keep showing the knock-off instead of making their own show) and take up arms:

"We're gonna rain terror slaw down on 'em! You stupid bastards! They come at us with war, we hit 'em with Armageddon. They come at us with Armageddon, we hit 'em with Apocalypse!"

"But Chauncey, Armageddon and Apocalypse are essentially synonymous!"

"They come at us with synonyms, we hit 'em with correlations, analogues, verbal equivalents!"

After John Oates, Corin Tucker, Devendra Banhart, Rick Springfield, and a children's choir sing a song called "War Never Solved Anything", the two shows come to a peace agreement and split the screen 60/40 for the last 5 minutes of the episode. It was reminiscent of the "Patience" episode in the sense that the makers of Wonder Showzen seem unafraid of alienating viewers in their pursuit of smashing tv conventions. Or maybe they're unafraid of smashing tv conventions in their pursuit of alienating viewers. In that way, it's sort of like Fox: What's the point of [airing only three episodes of a show before cancelling it]/[playing half of an episode, then replaying that half in reverse] if it's only going to annoy viewers? Maybe experimentation and alienation are bound together in their philosophies. Who knows, maybe the executives at Fox are secretly members of a cult whose beliefs are based in avant garde art and the transgressive scheduling of television programs.

That's right: I said "transgressive" and I meant it. I see little difference between Joe Dallesandro and Ryan Seacrest, between Richard Kern and Simon Cowell.

Great, now I've got even more respect for the Fox network. Do you see now why I shouldn't update so much?

Hot Country Hits, Vol. 8

So I passed Stats. I would have liked to have passed it more resoundingly, but there's something to be said for passing a class on the very edge between passing and failing. And that something is "Good work, idiot."

Ah, romance

We'll go through the windshield together!

Substituting one form of self-destruction with another

Back in February, I won $120 in travel vouchers from WestJet. Last week I figured I'd better take a look at the fine print lest I lose the vouchers' value forever. Ends up the vouchers were good only for travel completed by June 1. Since the Sheaf is going to keep me in Saskatoon until June 8, I had to plan a quick, pointless trip in order to derive any value from the vouchers. (Sort of like "I've got coupons for 70% off lychees. I hate lychees, but you can't pass up 70% off!") (Yes, I do hate lychees.) I decided to fly to Las Vegas for four days, because I figured that flights to Las Vegas would be cheap -- they're always on sale, y'know?

Blah blah, booked tickets, hurray. The fun started when I started researching hotels.

Dude, hotels in Las Vegas are expensive. There were only two hotels which had average room rates under $100 per night: Circus Circus and the Hooters Hotel & Casino. Circus Circus was the cheaper of the two, but circuses scare me. It's like all the fun of a carnival, but with more crazy shit you can't control. (Also, I hate carnivals.) I don't need that. But then, see, I couldn't stay at the Hooters Hotel & Casino. Hooters in principle is awesome: chicks in tight outfits serving delicious wings. Hooters in in practice is a big bowl of bad: really unattractive chicks, whose cleavage is their only redeeming feature, in tight outfits serving delicious wings without napkins; maybe if the girls were more attractive, or maybe if the outfits were tighter, or maybe if they did away with the whole chicks 'n' outfits combo entirely and concentrated on the wings, then it'd be ok. As it is ... damn, them wings is tasty.

Anyway, the problem escalated. If I'm staying in a hotel whose core business was founded on the exploitation of unattractive women, then I'm opening the door to a crazy-ass bacchanal. Me, I love the crazy-ass bacchanals, but I'm a terrible liar. If people are going to ask why I wasn't answering my phone for four days, I'll have to tell them it was because I was in Las Vegas. If people are going to ask why I was in Las Vegas, I'm going to have to recount the first paragraph of this blog post, which I would have had printed onto small cards for the sake of efficiency. If people are going to ask how Las Vegas was, I'd have to tell them: it was four days of hookers and wings. Er, hooters and wings. No, no, it was actually hooters and hookers and wings. I looked up the Moonlight Bunny Ranch (you know, the place from HBO's Cathouse!) and it ends up they are going to be filming the next season of Cathouse right when I'm in Las Vegas. I can't afford not to go!

And yet, I couldn't afford not to not to go. It was ridiculous; I'd be looking at $1000 just to get to the brothel. I theorized that it might be best to cut out the middle man and just book a room at the brothel for four days, but I've seen their pool on the show, and it's kinda depressing. Just like the thought of visiting a brothel -- ha-cha! Really, once you start paying money for sex (as opposed to paying with your dignity, which is what I'm used to) then there's no undoing it. You've crossed a threshhold, no takebacks, no erasies. It's like eating a lychee.

Damn you, Las Vegas! I was hoping to get away for four days, and next thing I know I'm paying for sex in the middle of the desert!

I called WestJet and cancelled the tickets. Got a travel credit which is good for a year. That's a-ight. Of course, I still have to pay for the travel credit (minus the original $120), so that's ... something akin to "a-ight", but not quite as good.

So what am I doing with my new lease on life? Going skydiving, that's what. It only makes sense: my grandfather went skydiving at 91, and in my ongoing quest to be one-third the man he was, skydiving seems the likeliest way to continue. I sent out an email to a dozen friends because I don't have a car and because I think it will be more fun with friends and because I don't have a car. From those dozen emails, I have received one yes and two no's. My friends are apparently quite lame; their roles will be re-cast for next season.

Hurray. More videos.

I switched ISP's the other day, going from DSL to cable. To test the faster service, I uploaded Stephen Colbert's speech at the White House Correspondents' Dinner from Saturday night. At 197 MB, it's a little on the big side, but it's oh so worth it.

Here's the video. (Right-click and save as, yo.)

Why is it worth it? Two reasons:

1) They usually book good comedians to work the White House Correspondents' Dinner, but [allegedly] tell the comedians to go easy on the President. I think Colbert ignored that memo.

2) It's a tradition for Presidents to do a comedy bit at the event. At last year's Correspondents' Dinner, Bush showed a video of himself farcically looking for WMD's under his desk. I think he deserved a good reaming after that, and Colbert delivers it here.

Here's a good write-up of Colbert's performance vis-a-vis American Dreamz. No, really!.