going postal

You know you can officially be counted as one of the obsessed when you're staring at a picture of a cross-sectional cut of a tadpole embryo wondering how the hell you will be able to identify the parts of the otic vesicle given the awful picture in your lab manual and your classmates ask you, "Does Arsenal have a problem, Jillian Lee?"* And you say, "No," then, "Well," then proceed to talk about your defense and having to play a match every three or so days instead of asking them how they got around labeling the level of the heart.

 

*And you can hear the implied, "We know Barcelona do not by the way you talk about them." Classmates. Sometimes they kill you.

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Born on this day: Hermann Goering, Joe Frazier, Haruki Murakami, Rush Limbaugh. And my dad, who deserves everything good and a lot more besides. Happy birthday.

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My congratulations to Lionel Messi, FIFA men's Ballon d'Or winner. I expected it to be Xavi. I think everyone expected it to be Xavi, for conducting play for both Barcelona and Spain, for 2008's Euros and 2009's treble and 2010's World Cup and for every underrated ninety minutes on the way, in between, and after. I can say what the rest of the football-following world is saying about all the problems bound to arise from trying to determine who the best player of the past calendar year was based on votes and without even giving something more solid to back up the word "best", but. Look, I know the acknowledgement is nice, but if you can play like Xavi (or, for that matter, like Messi or Iniesta)-

The achievement is in the playing. Everything else is just a really good bonus.

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There is one award that will brook no arguments with me. No arguments at all.

 

Arsene Wenger, World Coach of the Decade. Congrats, boss.

going postal

You know you can officially be counted as one of the obsessed when you're staring at a picture of a cross-sectional cut of a tadpole embryo wondering how the hell you will be able to identify the parts of the otic vesicle given the awful picture in your lab manual and your classmates ask you, "Does Arsenal have a problem, Jillian Lee?"* And you say, "No," then, "Well," then proceed to talk about your defense and having to play a match every three or so days instead of asking them how they got around labeling the level of the heart.

 

*And you can hear the implied, "We know Barcelona do not by the way you talk about them." Classmates. Sometimes they kill you.

---

Born on this day: Hermann Goering, Joe Frazier, Haruki Murakami, Rush Limbaugh. And my dad, who deserves everything good and a lot more besides. Happy birthday.

---

My congratulations to Lionel Messi, FIFA men's Ballon d'Or winner. I expected it to be Xavi. I think everyone expected it to be Xavi, for conducting play for both Barcelona and Spain, for 2008's Euros and 2009's treble and 2010's World Cup and for every underrated ninety minutes on the way, in between, and after. I can say what the rest of the football-following world is saying about all the problems bound to arise from trying to determine who the best player of the past calendar year was based on votes and without even giving something more solid to back up the word "best", but. Look, I know the acknowledgement is nice, but if you can play like Xavi (or, for that matter, like Messi or Iniesta)-

The achievement is in the playing. Everything else is just a really good bonus.

---

There is one award that will brook no arguments with me. No arguments at all.

 

Arsene Wenger, World Coach of the Decade. Congrats, boss.

new rule: when the world tires you out, read Les Mis.

So long as there shall exist, by reason of law or custom, a social condemnation, which, in the face of civilization, artificially creates hells on earth, and complicates a destiny that is divine, with human fatality; so long as the three problems of the age- the degradation of man by poverty, the ruin of woman by starvation, and the dwarfing of childhood by physical and spiritual night- are not solved; so long as, in certain regions, social asphyxia shall be possible; in other words, and from a yet more extended point of view, so long as ignorance and misery remain on earth, books like this cannot be useless.

new rule: when the world tires you out, read Les Mis.

So long as there shall exist, by reason of law or custom, a social condemnation, which, in the face of civilization, artificially creates hells on earth, and complicates a destiny that is divine, with human fatality; so long as the three problems of the age- the degradation of man by poverty, the ruin of woman by starvation, and the dwarfing of childhood by physical and spiritual night- are not solved; so long as, in certain regions, social asphyxia shall be possible; in other words, and from a yet more extended point of view, so long as ignorance and misery remain on earth, books like this cannot be useless.