A little too ironic...and yeah I really do think

Had a random thought in the shower this morning...if liberals are so sold on evolution, isn't it a little ironic that they are the ones most in favor of government intervention/regulation/etc? Evolution seems like the biological equivalent of a free market, or I guess maybe that's natural selection I'm talking about, but still. How do the United Steelworkers feel about that? Was Mother Nature passing out foodstamps to the dinosaurs? I'm sure there are some subtleties that I am missing (I guess believing in evolution doesn't necessarily make you a proponent of it), but on the surface it was an interesting thought.

Watch This Wednesday #30: Even Stephven

Today, I bring you another clip from Comedy Central, this time from an old recurring segment on The Daily Show called Even Stephven, featuring Stephen Colbert and Steve Carell making a mockery of political debate television. There are several more of these if you go to Comedy Central and dig around, but this is the one that I remember best.

FSS 3: Lots of stuff going on

This past weekend was full of stuff, and yet somehow I still managed to feel lazy. Friday night I saw the new Indiana Jones movie, and while I've since read negative reviews that I can understand and somewhat agree with, I did still have an enjoyable time watching it, so I feel like 4 stars (out of 5) is fair given my experience. I probably won't go see it again, but it was still worth seeing. I went with a friend, and it was a nice evening.

Saturday I was mostly lazy during the day, but did make a jaunt over to Wal-Mart to have a key made for our new roommate, who then proceeded to call me and back out of moving in with us. :( We've (and by "We've", I mean "I've", as my roommates haven't done anything to look that I can tell) been trying for the last two months to find someone to rent out our master bedroom to, but have not had much luck in finding people, despite a lot of people wanting to come look at it. I would think that if they had a problem with the price they wouldn't even come look, but that doesn't seem to be the case. If we don't find someone before the end of June I'm going to start thinking hard about moving somewhere else.

Saturday night I went with a group of friends over to the U of U institute for a BBQ/Dance/Drive-in, where the BBQ consisted of hot dogs only, along with generic chips and pretzels. And I managed to spill catchup on my shirt within the first 20 minutes. Luckily I had a sweatshirt with me and was able to wear that over. We hung out for a couple hours and split about the time the movies were starting up, and headed back to my place where we enjoyed some Brian Regan on DVD.

Sunday was fairly full with church stuff, and hunting for roommates, and then Sunday night a large group was gathered at my first counselor's house for movies and fun. The end of the evening featured a fairly awkward situation involving myself and two girls, one of whom said, "Oh, I forgot something in the house", and the other of whom said moments later "I'm thinking you need to take me out either this Saturday or next. Which works best for you?" The whole story along with some other comments on dating probably deserves its own post, but for now suffice it to say that I felt put on the spot and somewhat manipulated into an uncomfortable situation. Also hearing girls complain that "guys need to date more" is starting to get pretty old for a variety of reasons.

Yesterday was Memorial Day and after a lazy start to things I headed out to my parents' house for the middle of the day where we played cards and Phase 10 Dice, and had BBQed chicken for dinner. I made back to SLC in time to catch up with some friends for dessert at Chili's and some Mario Kart Wii to bring the long weekend to a close.

Quick question for those of you who read this far: Are you enjoying these updates? If so, take the time to make a quick comment and say so.

Watch This Wednesday #29: Pre-Taped Call-in Show

Those of you who are familiar with Arrested Development are probably well aware of the comedic genius that is David Cross. If you aren't, and I know that the show can be a little off-color sometimes, here's a great clip from the Mr. Show show that David used to be on. In it, he's the host of a TV call-in show that is taped a week in advance. Yes, it does seem a little complicated, and as you'll see the host is really having a rough go of things. Make sure to stick around til the end, where the comedy goes to another level.



Upon rewatching this, I really have to say I love the old man who just sits there through the whole thing, as well as watching the transformation of the host from the first show to the current show.

The Return of Fin de Semana Stories

Remember when I was going to try to give more updates about what I'd been up to? Well its never too late for a second chance, right?

This past weekend was a pretty fun one. Friday night I went to Cafe Rio with about 10 people from my ward, and then after that we headed over to another friend's to watch Game 6 of the Jazz-Lakers series. The Jazz trailed by a lot for most of the game which made it pretty hard to watch. Then at the very end, they made a tremendous comeback only to fall 3 points short, with two chances to tie in the last 5 seconds. And thus ends the Jazz's season. I feel like it was a successful season, although if our goal is to win a championship, we need to make sure we've got all the pieces in place that we need. Right now, my hope is that they can hang on and stay healthy and outlive all the other current Western Conference contenders, but that seems like a bad way to try to win.

Anyway, Saturday I spent catching up on some errands that I needed to run (grocery shopping, paying bills, etc.) and then had a blind date Saturday night. It felt like a pretty typical blind date -- nothing to write home about, but thankfully not too painful. Maybe I should have a better attitude, but I rarely go into those things with high hopes. Not entirely sure why, but it does seem like if I have a hard enough time finding girls that like enough to want to pursue a relationship with, choosing from girls that I know, the probability of someone else (who in this case, doesn't hardly know me either) picking someone for me to go out with that I'm going to end up being interested is pretty low. I still feel like I went in with an open mind, but lets just say my expectations are pretty low on those things.

Finally, Sunday was pretty full of church stuff: ward breakfast, EQ Presidency meeting, church, three home teaching appointments, and ward prayer. In between some of those things, we managed to finally have someone come over and look at our room for rent and decide that they were interested in moving in. I'm not counting my chickens until they at least move some stuff in, and maybe not until I see that first rent check, but it sounds like a pretty done deal. So that was a pretty good thing to have happen. Finally, I finished off the night watching "School of Rock" with some friends, and got to point out the Spider move to some people who had never noticed it before.

Speaking of optimism, I'm tagging this post with "weekly feature", so we'll see if I can't keep it up.

Slowly but surely...

Last night my department had a graduation dinner to honor people who've recently graduated or who will be graduating soon. I was invited to attend. Thats right, I'm in the "graduating soon" category. How soon that will be depends mainly on how much I can buckle down of the next few months and do the writing that I have left to do for my dissertation, but I guess at this point, the fact that I will someday graduate with my PhD in Informatics is pretty much an inevitability. And that thought is still pretty foreign to me. I've been in school pretty much my whole life (not counting the mission), and the thought of finally leaving school behind and getting a "real" job actually feels quite welcome to me.

Anyway, the dinner last night was nice, despite my not feeling like a graduate at this point. My advisor was out of town, but another member of my committee had some nice things to say about me. That was nice, because its rare that I have much interaction with any of the faculty these days, and I don't get much feedback as far as what people think of me and how I'm doing with my project.

My current goal is to finish writing by July, so I can defend in August. I guess we'll see how that shakes out, but I figure its better to shoot for August and miss than to shoot for September and miss, right?

For all your hard-hitting news...

Browsing through the D-News tonight and read an article about David Archuleta and his dad being banned from being backstage or something or other. Anyway the second half of the article was about his visit to Utah, and had this gem of a paragraph:

The singer and his family declined to be interviewed at the event, but David Archuleta did speak with the Salt Lake City Fox affiliate, KSTU-TV. "Wow," he exclaimed as he viewed the cheerleading squad outside his stretch limousine.

Thats all the information they give about his "speaking" with Fox News. Glad they included that.

I don't know if this means if I'm doing better or worse

So...in the past week, I've had 4 separate people want to set me up with someone they know, and its happened at least 6 times in the past month. This is a huge surge in the frequency of this happening to me. Generally I don't get super excited over the idea of being set up, and I sometimes feel like it means people think I need some help (maybe I do need some help), but on the other hand, I guess I should be happy that people either care about me enough to be interested, or think highly enough of me to consider me for someone else that they are worried about, right?

Watch This Wednesday #28: More Mockery...this time for the Guammy Bears

I know I said I'm busy, but thankfully, my good friend CJ has had the foresight to recommend a video for you all to watch, featuring Stephen Colbert interviewing the congresswoman from Guam.



P.S. Iron Man gets two thumbs up from me! Feels like summer time at the theater.

Old Book, Old Book #5: Bringing Down the House

While I'm still working on GEB (hence "Old Book, Old Book"), and trust me its something that deserves a good, long read, I recently took a break for some lighter reading, and read the book "Bringing Down the House", the book that served as an inspiration for the recent film "21". Generally when I see a movie that is "based on" or "inspired by" true events, I like to find out the true story behind it. Often I find the true story to be more interesting, sometimes for the mere fact that it actually happened, but usually I just enjoy it better for other qualities.

I enjoyed "21" and I cruised through "Bringing Down the House" in a matter of days, so if you enjoyed the movie, or even if you didn't see it, I'd recommend checking out the book. It does have some adult language, so if thats a problem for you, you might want to skip it.

Busy Times

To the few of you who regularly check my blog and aren't just directed here by Google image searches for cartoon stuff or old McDonalds Characters, I just wanted to post a quick update. I've been kind of all over the place the last couple weeks. I went to Wisconsin for a job interview for half of last week. The first half of this week I went fishing/camping with my dad and older brother (and caught a fish with a flyrod for the first time), and today and tomorrow we'll be enjoying a family vacation to...a little place called Salt Lake City. Then next week I really need to get back to hitting the whole "trying to graduate this summer" thing pretty hard. So I probably won't be blogging tons, but maybe I'll just post a few shorter update-type blogs like this one.