It's Time. . .

All you Wii owners better have a copy of Super Smash Bros Brawl by the end of today!

I shall meet you in the Subspace Emissary.

Edit: FYI, my friend code is 0688-4932-2094

Washington word association

The world's largest rodent:


The world's largest Colbert, between the restrooms at the National Portrait Gallery:


The world's largest ...




Dick Cheney's house, outside of which there was a crazy man with a sign saying "Vatican Hides Pedophiles":



The Embassy of Iraq, across the street from Mr. Cheney (I thought of bringing them the paper but worried about snipers):



I had dinner with doc frier and the lady frier at a taqueria after the Iraqi embassy, but failed to take pictures either of the company or of the fare. More to come soon (and hopefully some capybara videos).

a night on the town: redwood city

PUB-lic Humiliation

Tagline:
Hupit Productions is pleased to present another chapter of this exciting novel called LIFE!

Chapter 1
Cardenal "Top Shelf" and 2nd Floor faced off this weekend in the genteel city of London.

Chapter 2
Abs duly offended the ladies of the fairer floor by calling his former RCC dirty names. He paused from his slanderous speech to groom his hair, aided by his mirror-backed cell phone. In the meantime, a crowd formed to witness the fray.

Chapter 3
C-Bear seized this opportunity to recoup. Emboldened by a goblet of cider . . . half a strawberry beer . . . and a hefeweizen, she gave Abs a brutal tongue-lashing. Forced to concede defeat, Third Floor delegate Wei Wei had to perform a special trick for the entertainment of all.

Chapter 4
The fight was all in jest, however, and afterwards it was a merry party that trooped over to Madame's house with hot heels. Upon their arrival, they were made to understand that he lived in a backporch-cum-apartment, an LSE-provisioned luxury for which he was paying through the nose, in his neverending courtship with all manners of acronym anagrams containing these three magic letters. Is ESL his next stop?

Chapter 5
They also learned that Wei Wei is a lush (note the Stella Artois clutched protectively to his bosom).

Denoument
The night was still young. Reinforcements in hand and eyes aglow, they allowed Abs to escort them to his apartment two doors down. Sitting on the back deck, they spoke in hushed voices about politics, economics, and whether or not Catherine the Great met her death while having sex with a horse.

Back cover blurb:
Nights in London are beautiful. Is that you, Mary Poppins?

Patrick Hunt's crowning moment

(From the Stanford Report.)

Remember, Remember...

So I'm all moved in to my new place, a tiny little studio in a nicely done-up Regency terrace house near Baker Street, a few steps from Sherlock Holmes at 221b, not to mention Dorset Square, a placid little garden that was the original home of the Marylebone Cricket Club and site of Thomas Lord's first cricket ground (be still my desi heart!). So far, I've been living in Hendon with a relative (let's see, my paternal grandfather's first cousin, to be precise) who asked me, not entirely unpolitely, to shove off (he even offered to pay the rent!). The commute was a bit much (one hour each way on the Northern Line, the excrement-filled digestive tract running down the back of the London Underground's shrimp), the food was terrible and there was no electricity in half the house (including the bathroom), so I'm not too bummed about having left.

I am enrolled, for those of you I've failed to keep informed, at the London School of Economics, in what is probably my final attempt to stave off the increasingly violent passes that Reality's been making at me as of late. I've been thinking the past few weeks about how thoroughly narcissistic it is of me to think of going on to do a Ph.D. now that my father has retired (he and my mother left Dublin last month for Lahore, where they're now looking for a more-or-less permanent place so that they can decay with a little grace). It's not that I feel too old to be a burden on them (though I probably am) or that they've ever discouraged me from doing what I want to do (quite the opposite, as a matter of fact), but I'm appalled at the sacrifices they now have to make to support me. Not only have they had to sell much of what they've collected over the years, paintings, carpets and all, but my father has gotten another job so that he can finance me this year, and my mother is looking for one as well; surely, they deserve better than this at their age. Rationalizations aside, I'm thinking of applying to a few economic consultancies for research positions, but can't think of anything else I'd be good for.

And, yes, the news from Pakistan is terribly depressing. It's difficult to know what's going on with the media blackout, but this crisis can't end well for anybody. We've been yo-yoing up and down the same way for 60 years now, and you'd think we knew better, but it seems not. Perhaps the only difference is that now Pakistan's a political football for the 2008 White House candidates (not to mention the Tories and Brown-ites) to kick about, so every person I've run into manages to have an opinion on the situation, despite knowing nothing about Pakistan whatsoever. It's just too depressing to bear thinking about.

So happier news: two other Cardenaliens have landed in London, and not just any old Cardenaliens, but top-drawer ones... third floor, baby! I'll leave figuring out their identities as an exercise for the interested reader (bonus points for not using Facebook), but it's been very pleasant sharing a beer with a familiar face. Otherwise, the kids at LSE are fairly friendly, but not terribly interesting outside of the narrow scope of their departments: perhaps this is the issue many people have with postgrads? It's hard to engage them about books, history, art or even porn, but at least they're brainy when it comes to economics, as if that were a substitute. (The one exception was a perky Saudi Derrida-iste studying Communication(s), though she failed to enlighten me on how the old fraud's politics of friendship are a novel contribution to our understanding of the world.)

The courses themselves are interesting and/or challenging, even if the lecturers have no time for us and the general paradigm involves lots of self-study with books, no feedback on assignments and a single end-of-year exam that counts for 100% of the grade. I'm even teaching undergraduates, 40ish first-year economics students over three sections. It might be the highlight of my week, to be honest - it's really refreshing to be surrounded by bright-eyed and bushy-tailed youngsters, and quite rewarding. Perhaps I should go in for teaching...

And I'm spent. The Guy Fawkes fireworks stopped a while ago, and I should be turning in, in any case.

Hello Kitty is used to shame police

http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/asiapcf/08/06/thai.hello.kitty.ap/index.html

I can't believe it!!

the bum ends

Ludicrous! Just when it seemed I would be 6 hours closer to you, (half of) you get ~6 hours further away from me. At least meeting halfway now will mean familiar places on the West Coast rather than somewhere in the middle of the Pacific Ocean (say, oh, Port Vila, capital of our favourite country).

I leave Singapore for Japan in a week to assist local teachers of English, in the port town of Onahama on the east coast. It's about 2hrs away from Tokyo by regular train and about 6hrs away from mounting nuclear disasters. Being on the beach, the town apparently sees a lot of interest in surfing (judging by the unusual numbers of related stores and groups). I doubt I will get a wetsuit any time soon. I am likelier to be found at the fish market (within biking distance from my school!) sampling the morning's catch, including shimmering masses of the region's specialty--an anchovy-sized species called 目光 mehikari, or bright-eyes (your favourite, Brian!), or else comfortably deck-chair-and-parasolled, reading on dry sand, partly expecting some Odysseus, German soldier, or tired surfer to wash ashore. What incomparable, liquid pleasures!

For those of you who are hearing all this for the first time, I apologise for not telling you personally, but that's clearly a sign you need to IM more (or at least when it's not 4 in the morning for me). Govi, your All-Seeing Eye is to be my news filter permanently. Brian, that rendering of Glypic Poltroon is all I want in a woman (she's electronic, eh?). And T(h)eresa... where are you?

adventures in fog city and the hills of oakland

Jenna and Carina co-star in an exciting new episode of "Cyclists versus the (Assholes on) Segways!"
Old Cardenalites and a good-natured social worker pause before Anthony Chabot Lake.

parachute, redux

It's been a year! And clearly our legacy lives on.





Congratulations, sake timer. In Stanford magazine recently:





(For the Geisha: kawaii!!)
There is a poem, too, but you'll have to Google for it yourselves.


I went home for the weekend to Texas to celebrate and came back to DC with about 40 pounds of carefully packaged food that my mother had concealed in different parts of my bag. When I unrolled a towel I had packed, three boxes of veggie burgers fell out. (For those interested, nothing arrived packaged in whole wheat bread - bubble wrap was used, however.)

"Listen to Me."

I published the Glyptic Poltroon on facebook documents; I'm not sure if I will leave it there. I suggest visiting the page and listening to the british lady read it to you.

http://apps.facebook.com/scribd/view/88762

<3

Philosophy Laboratory Dream

Exposition
I'm seated on a desk (along with Daniel from Ugly Betty) on the mezzanine level of a large warehouse, looking down at the first floor. The first floor contains Govind and Collin's Philosophy Laboratory. The laboratory consists of a series of connected rooms constructed out of cubical walls, each separated by a door with a luminescent-red screen on it. Within some of the rooms are cyborgs (one has a robotic body and a human head, another has human limbs and a robotic head, etc).

Development
I notice Collin and Govind passing between the rooms easily, but the cyborgs stay within their rooms. I also sense that the cyborgs have malicious intentions. I express this concern to Daniel from Ugly Betty, and he explains to me that we are safe from the cyborgs because each door is sealed with a "simple moral question." Therefore, since they are cyborgs, they do not know how to answer the questions. I also notice that in addition to Collin and Govind, another researcher is moving around in the rooms. He seems to have some sort of neuromuscular disease, so he shakes the cubical walls unintentionally each time he tries to enter another room. I am filled with fear because I notice how flimsy the doors and walls are; the cyborgs could be unleashed at any moment. (I also wonder to myself how he could be allowed to work there when he endangers everyone, but conclude that it must be for diversity's sake).

Culmination
The cyborgs burst out as a result of the disabled man's shaking. We all run in separate directions, each being pursued by a cyborg. I run out of the warehouse towards a street intersection (the setting is like that of suburbia near a rich high school). As I run across the cross walk, I notice Collin and Govind walking calmly in the other direction; they wave, but I run on, still pursued by the cyborg (I am relieved to see them because I thought they were harmed, but wonder why they don't tell me how to save myself). I run up a grassy hill, where I'm trapped on a ridge by a little league stadium at my back and the cyborg.

Lysis
I'm cornered; so I fight the cyborg. It does not really fight back, but is not injured by my attacks (like dropping flat gym weights on its joints, or popping a glass christmas ornament in its eye with the heel of my hand). End.

What is inside the new De Young Museum?

On this gloriously sunny day we went to the Sunset to get ice cream. On the way there, we stopped at the De Young Museum.

We saw a piece of lead toast, ceramic books, and clothes by Vivienne Westwood, including a T shirt with an explicit passage from a sex novel. Also we saw a dress called "Koo" from Westwood's Hype collection, which we will have to steal when Carina becomes a raver.

Jenna came too but she had to go home and write a paper before the cameras emerged. Let this be a lesson to you: stay out of grad school, kids.



Love from San Francisco,

Govind and Phoebe

AJ Whereabouts

It looks like AJ has found yet another job outside of Stanford. He's working for meebo now!

http://blog.meebo.com/team