Something I came across in the times

Kumquats, which are not citrus fruits but belong to another genus, originated in China and have been cultivated across Asia for centuries. They inspired some unorthodox grafting techniques: in "The Oxford Companion to Food," Alan Davidson cites this bit of instruction from the "Book of Nabatean Agriculture," a 10th-century Iraqi text: "The branch which is to be grafted must be in the hand of a beautiful damsel, whilst a male person has disgraceful and unnatural sexual intercourse with her; during intercourse the woman grafts the branch into the tree."

Modern growers have streamlined the cultivation process somewhat.

fo(ol)rmal pictures

Some pictures from the foolormal and the DG formal parties. There was quite a divide in style between the two events. Also, I'm just a little disappointed that none of the foolormal pictures did full justice to the sky blue pants I was wearing, but oh well. Here are some photos.

The man who couldn't bleed

So I'm going to try and post. Several things, most good, have happened over the last week but I fear that my negligence and the irreparable damages of time to memory may hinder my telling of them. But enough disclaiming.

Last thursday I had an appointment to donate platelets. After all the preliminaries had been completed the nurse stuck the needle in my vein and and nothing happened. After checking all the tubes, pressure dealys, and other things the situation was not remedied. So they stuck me again, no result. They attributed my lack of bleeding to my blood rapidly coagulating at the tip of the needle. The funny thing about the experience was that they showed more concern about me after I wasn't able to give blood than when I had given it successfully. Was sort of a bizarre experience.

Another little amusing episode that happened last week was walking into the reg with rachael. She managed to drop her ID, library card, and credit card on the tiled ground and while she ineffectively grasped at the ID I picked up the other two. Was really amusing because of the number of people walking by as she couldn't pick her ID up because it was too flush with the floor. Eventually I tried and was also met with abject failure. Finally I picked it up using the knife I found to slide under it and lift it. So far the knife has been used to cut string, lift up an ID, and cut bread, which was unsuprisingly difficult as the blade is only 1.5" long at most. I've got a running list in my head of the its various uses and it appears that its not worthwhile to carry around, but nonetheless I now feel naked without it.

More than 2 weeks ago I went to Victory's banner with rachael and rose. its a breakfast place in Roscoe village that is run by followers of a man named Sri Chinmoy. (I believe that's his name) The food was almost enough to make me give up secular ambition and follow Sri in the pursuit of his spiritual goals but I managed to resist the urge, my thoughts and worries are with rachael though as I fear the influence of good french toast upon her. Some details about the place that amused me were the shelves of books written by Sri, one called Beyond Within, I think outside or without was what he was going for there. Also the looping video of him lifting planes, helicopters, firemen, and automobiles 2-3 inches off the ground. I was astonished at his consistency in lifting objects varying from 1900# to 27,000# between 2-3 inches. Still, the chai was divine.

Last weekend I embarked on a trip to the wisconsin dells. Drove up with King and along the way had dinner with his parents and his healthy and mentally together 91 year old grandmother. In the dells we had some good times and made some memories. The list includes:

Top Gun drinking game: very fun, liked the rule addition of having to drink when inter-male emotional bonding occurs. Also we each got a call sign. Cho was our Maverick because of his stature and movie star appearance. Cougar was a surpisingly involved call sign.

Twirly Tornado water ride: Suprisingly fun, even on repeated descents, bryan almost killed cho and I felt like I was going to fall off every time. We also played 4 on 4 basketball in a pool. Was a lot of fun, the hoop was the perfect height to make me look ridiculous as I tried to dunk on it.

The food: Pizza I made turned out pretty well, Bryan's cooking though drew no end of deserving accolades. The smoked pork pulled sandwiches were ridiculously good, and the breakfast casseroles were top-notch.

Charades and Celebrities were played as was the train game, all very fun activities.

Caps: Don't play against Chuck in Caps, Lost 11-3 and then 11-4 or 5. I scored 3 each game. Don't play chuck, the inevitability of your defeat weighs on you after about 4 rounds of shooting.

The Great Clock: I was very happy that Thor came down with me so we could check out the Great Clock dealy in the main lobby. Its about 30 feet high and 20 feet wide. At 10 in the am an animatronic show began that was disturbing. First various woodland creatures owl, squirrel, beaver, and turtle talk about being called by the great wolf. Then an Indian maiden and french fur trapper (the beaver was remarkably composed with his arrival) come and are instructed in song by the animals about the "Rhytmn of nature." Ghastly stuff. Thor noticed that the spires on top of the clock with acorns right under them were remarkably phallic, I wholeheartedly agreed. It was an amazing 15 minutes. I reccomend everyone check it out drunk next year.

Drunkenness: Outright inebriation was relatively rare, though I vacillated between 1/4 and 1/2 drunk for most of the weekend. I also was unfortunately That Guy as I spilled beverages twice. I must learn to keep my gesticulations in check.

All in all good time. And sally pointed out that we managed to avoid talking about ultimate for the entire time.

Tues/Wed Watched harold and maude as well as The life aquatic. Both starring Bud Court as harold and bond company stooge respectively. I was surprised at the fact that I bought the intergenerational romance between harold and maude, early 20s and nearly 80. I suppose there is hope for love of older women.

Last night went to Gene and georgetti's to see Whitney with russell, yamaguchi, abando, king, and gunderson. Very good time over very good food. There's not much to say as probably about half of this blog's regular readership was present, but we all laughed really hard 4 or 5 times. Thanks again Whit.

On the way to restaraunt bumped into a really good friend from junior high and high school. Talked for a few minutes, forgot to get his contact info. Oh well, that's why someone invented Google.

Good News and Bad

Its funny how sometimes good and bad news can come at the same time. For now I'll only recount the good: congratulations to Rachael for getting into the Latin American Studies program.

I'll probably leave a much longer post later today or tomorrow regarding my recent activities and hijinks.

Eternal Glory is finally mine

So we won the tournament this past weekend, but before we get to that I would like to mention something regarding george's comment on the previous post. He mentioned the virgin mary grilled cheese sandwich, which is funny because last tuesday I was talking about the very same sandwich with lyrica and jason. Its just funny to me that it came up twice, and now I feel somewhat stupid for not connecting Turin with its famous shroud, a bit of an oversight on my part.

Friday night watched the concluding 4 episodes to AD with eric, chuck, chuck's sister, and rick. Very enjoyable episodes, I'm glad they tied everything together at the end so that you're left with a feeling of satisfaction at the conclusion. Eric even made some choclate frozen bananas for us that were quite good. Saturday morning we left for Knox and halfway there we got onto a patch of slick highway. Across the lanes we saw an accident where a SUV had probably slid into the rear left trailer wheels of a semi and whose front half was destroyed, the semi's trailer was across most of the two lanes and traffic was stopped. As we were driving by the car 50 yards ahead of us went into an uncontrolled spin out that took about 8 seconds and wound up facing the road from the edge, as we passed a couple of seconds later we noticed the guy still had his cellphone pressed to his ear. We passed some other cars that were off the highway, all in the other lanes, and we came upon an inverted white van in the median. Jake did a good job driving us through it, was a tense 10 minutes. We were going something like 20 mph through most of it.

Eventually we made it and yes we did win the knox tournament and had some very closely contested games along the way. WE played under the names Oojah and Oojamaflip. We took 10 people and went 2-2 on saturday. Losing to knox 8-11 and knox alums 11-12 after being up 11-9 on the alums before we lost it down the stretch. The next day we beat meddling kids 13-12 after being up 10-6 and 12-10 I believe, this was a particularly satisfying win as they beat us something like 4 times last summer. We then beat knox 11-6 and then knox alums 13-12 in the final. Was a bit of a tough tournament physically because we only had 1 female sub and 2 male subs. So down the stretch I think fatigue played a big part in allowing the other teams back into the game. Its kind of bizarre playing indoors since it skews the game heavily in favor of the offense. I played fairly well, had 2 really bad plays near the end of the knox alum and meddling kids game but overall my play was about all I could hope for, given my fitness and level of practice right now. This was only the second non-hat tournament (I believe I had something like a 18 game winning streak in hat games) that I've won, the other being a nasty 9s tourney at MSU. I know at least one person on the team for whom it was their first tournament win ever. Its funny how concentrated tournament wins are in ultimate. I'd venture a guess that something like 33% or more of people who have played regularly in college have never won a tournament of any kind. And that might be a lot higher. Was also the first tournament since about my freshman year that I played entirely sans ankle brace. Its nice to have two fully functional ankles to play on. So yeah, pretty fun weekend, even had some pretty good mexican food sat. night and a great breakfast sun. morning.

One last try at eternal glory.

So this weekend I'm headed out to scenic galesburg illinois in my last bid to win the annual indoor tournament hosted there by Knox college. I've been two other times and managed to lose in the finals each time, if memory serves correctly. This year the format is especially sweet as we don't have a game between 530 tomorrow evening and sunday at noon, possibly later. This means drinking and good times hopefully.

Tonight I'm headed up to the north side to watch the final 4 episodes of arrested development. They are being aired opposite the opening ceremonies of the winter olympics in Turin (a place I don't believe I'd heard of before the present games) which is what normal god-fearing americans will be watching I suppose. Its hard to believe that after this the show will probably be gone forever. There are rumors that showtime might pick it up but I am giving it up for dead tonight. I just hope it goes out in a manner befitting to its life: with crude wonderful character-driven humor and the best props ever to grace the small screen; (stair car, lincoln car, segway, banana stand, and of course the corn-baller) while America watches beret bedecked corporate spokesman wannabes parade around and preach to us about the eternal purity of sport, at least until the next judging scandal. Normally I'm not this bitter towards our olympic heroes, but I'm not feeling very accomodating at the moment.

Been enjoying netflix recently. Wathced "Dial M for Murder" and "The Big Sleep." M was the better movie overall, but TBS had some great dialogue interspersed throughout the most confusing plot I've encountered in recent history. Also watched "Junior Bonner" recently which is a Steve McQueen rodeo flick, Jason has recently been trumpeting the idea that we should all ask ourselves "WWSMD?" or What Would Steve McQueen Do when confronted with life's little obstacles. Its certainly not the worst of philosophies.

Have also started reading "Middlemarch" by George Eliot. I've enjoyed it so far and rather than read in my standard pedal to the metal fashion, I'm actually taking it slow and tackling it in 10-15 page increments, we'll see how that turns out. Gave platelets yesterday and will leave here shortly to get my comped burger and fries that comes with my particular species of do-gooderism. I can really see myself developing a pavlovian response to needles in association with good cheeseburgers. Oddly, when all is said and done, that will probably be counted among my more normal psychological quirks, or at least this readership can hope so, it will certainly keep things interesting.

WHAT'S JOE SAYING NOW?
Yesterday I was telling eric, jason and colin's roommate, about the words oojah and oojamaflip, when he asked me if I knew the word onanism. Apparently it comes from a man named Onan in the bible who displeased God. Should read genesis 38:6-10 if you want his story. Sounds like in life he really got the short end of the stick, and then in death his legacy is less than ideal. Got to love that old testament god. Anyway, at Jimmy's Eric and I indulged our dark sides with many off-colour jokes on this theme, which led to other off-colour jokes, none of them fit for a family website. Some other fun words I came across randomly.

termagant: A violent, overbearing, turbulent, brawling, quarrelsome woman; a virago, shrew, vixen. (Now the ordinary sense.) though its first definition in the OED is also interesting: christians accused muslims of worshipping a deity called Termagant who was supposed to be evil.

teratology: Biol. The study of monstrosities or abnormal formations in animals or plants. Was more amusing in webster's where they left it solely as the study of monsters but whatever.

The goings ons and a new installment of what I'm saying now

Yesterday I went up to the north and clybourn stop of the red line to have lunch with my brother, father, and stepmom. We went to a mexican place called Uncle Julio's. I ordered frog legs. Once I saw them on the menu I decided I had to try them and they were certainly interesting. Sort of a gamey chicken tasting meat with a hint of the sea I thought. They brought them out still whole on the leg so it looked like I had 3 severed lower frog sections on my plate. They were ok but I'm not going to start patrolling the edges of marshes and streams to catch my own quite yet. The rest of the our party, who ordered more traditional mexican dishes also enjoyed their meals.

After lunch I chatted with my brother for 30 minutes outside on a corner and then walked over to borders with the intention of writing two letters. Sally, former nemesis currently mr. briefcase player and legal scholar, was sitting in the very seat I was pining to get. We talked for ten minutes about life, I walked around a bit, and when she kindly gave it to me when she left. Its a good thing too because about three minutes later I spotted Kevin Cho headed down the escalator. I start waving and he gets a really weird look on his face as he's trying to figure out who I am and why is he always subject to these strange events. As he's about to disappear from view though he manages to elucidate who I am even as I'm beginning to wonder if its really kevin cho. He came up and we had a nice rambling conversation about life for thirty minutes before he left and I got back to my correspondence.

Upon leaving borders I decided that it would be cool to just walk around, this led to me walking from north and clybourn to the drake hotel, over to navy pier where I found a sweet pocket knife lying on the ground, and took in the great tourist kitsch that is navy pier. I was debating whether or not I should try to sneak onto the ferris wheel but decided against it as I didn't want to freeze to death though I could have used the paper I was carrying stuff my clothes as insulation if the ferris wheel happened to stop with me at the top. And though I love a good movie reenactment (in this case the day after tomorrow) I decided that furtive ferris wheel rides are in the end probably not as fun as just getting warm.

I went back to hyde park and met up with rose, rachael, a non-tormey megan, and friends for some salsa dancing in Ida Noyes. I was very impressed by the uniform skill of the participants, but managed to learn some elementary manuevers with the great and well-appreciated help of n.t. megan.

This morning woke up and watched the movie shane, with rachael and I making snide comments about the celibate well-shaven lifestyle of the title hero at the end and having a very short argument about whether or not he died at the end, I think he did. Rachael is too good to me as a roommate. While watching the movie we got to pause for leek, potato, and asparagus soup with homemade rustic wheat bread (made with a sponge, rachael was particularly pleased about that) and then she took some of the fabulous pizza dough we made ("Best Recipe 8-hour rise recipe) and made a dessert pizza with strawberries, cream cheese, a little powdered sugar, and the version of whipped cream that comes about from actually whipping cream. It was heaven.

So I cut myself shaving yesterday. I wish this event was unique but the truth is it isn't. I really need to start shaving better, because I can't go on like this. (sorry to subject the reading public to this but I thought that a direct admission of the problem would help bring about some change)

I had lunch with nadine the other day, which was nice because I got a chance to catch up with her, and on friday got a call from an old friend that I haven't spoken to in about a year and had a nice talk with her. Feeling pretty good about life at the moment, wish some things were different but hey that's par for the course I suppose.

Now for another installment of What's Joe Saying Now. Its been a while but I came upon a particularly good word while perusing the dictionary this morning. (yes I do that) The word is oojamaflip. Before I define it I just learned something interesting while looking it up again to get the word right. In rachael's OED dictionary its there, but its not in the online dictionary and a similar but different word has the verbatical definition. Anyway here it is according to both

oojamaflip = A thing whose name one cannot remember, does not know, or does not wish to mention; (by extension) a useful implement, a gadget. Also: (Mil. slang) a sauce or custard.

oojah = A thing whose name one cannot remember, does not know, or does not wish to mention; (by extension) a useful implement, a gadget. Also: (Mil. slang) a sauce or custard.

though in rachael's dictionary the sauce or custard was called whipped eggs with sugar. So for instance He-who-must-not-be-named in the popular harry potter books is an oojah. but in that case he's not whipped eggs with sugar. Oojamaflip does seem to exist online but where listed it seems to be used as a replacement for widget or thing-a-ma-jig. I think if anyone reading this is going to start a new ultimate team they should call it oojah or oojamaflip, at least publicly, the condition of course is that I have to be invited to play on it. The uncertainty of whether it should be oojah or oojamaflip will only enhance the joke since we don't know ourselves what it should be be called. We could call it oojah or oojamaflip?, or ooo for short. Fantastic.

Disclaimer: I wrote the below and now I don't know what I think of it, it might just be really boring and I suspect I'm wrong, feel free to stop reading now.

Another thing I'm wondering about is the word "sorry." When someone says that I often take it as an admission of error, the one who says it would like to take back what they did, but it also is often used in the sense of, "I'm sorry this had to happen", meaning whatever happened is unfortunate for you and I feel bad but I would do it again because its the way things have to be. Seeking to remedy my understanding I looked it up and both definitions are present which isn't surprising but it seems like the two definitions can mean two very different things in the same context. The question of degree is important because the difference is whether the person would go back and change something given the chance. I don't know, maybe I'm wrong, it just seems like when using the word you can't tell the depths to which someone is sorry unless they go on, which leads to confusion. Oh well, its still no excuse for the athlete's apology (something so regular and widespread it should get its own definition soon) of I'm sorry other people may have been offended by my actions. The classic non-apology.

46% of people need to read the constitution

Saw a poll on cnn.com today asking if visitors to the house and senate galleries should be permitted to wear t-shirts with political messages. An astounding, to my mind, 46% of respondents said no, they should not be allowed to do so. Because the last place we want to permit freedom of expression is in the heart of our own "free" country. I simply can't believe this number, 43,000+ people think that we should be censored in what we can say in the hallways of our own government. WTF!! Am I missing something, was there an incident during the state of the union address? I think I'm going to start a t-shirt company that says "Fuck you all, and doubly so if you object to my saying it," or, "F*#$ you all for censoring my right to write Fuck!" I haven't decided. I know the profanity is unbecoming, this is after all a family safe space (for the record, the past clause is written with irony), but its terrifying to me that people are so worried about symbols that they debase the principals behind them.

Getting over a cold, hopefully lots of ultimate and raquetball gets it out of the ol' body.