The University of Florida promises on their Web site that "detailed information, regarding assembly and processional times, will be available by the end of February." February ends in 15 minutes. Why do I have the feeling this will be yet another broken promise between me and UF?
And I want to go to grad school here.
posted by Jake at 11:45 PM

They say defense makes champions.
Well I agree with the statement, but I must humbly add to it.
Jake Hannaway makes champions.
My logic?
I recently was employed as the public address announcer for the UF Tennis Teams. Not 3 weeks later after I began work, the women's team is the best team in all the land. They've only lost to Duke this year.
The men's team is now ranked #2. They'll come along soon.
This is a Bill Parcells - class turnaround, and I'm happy I could be a part of it.
Case closed.
This is the same sort of logic that got me through the LSAT and will one day put me on top of the grand ladder of lawyer scum.
posted by Jake at 3:26 PM

I've been hearing a lot of talk lately about "stripping" citizenship, and, having never thought very hard about it, I naturally assumed this was un-Constitutional.

I direct the interested reader to two Supreme Court cases:

• Afroyim v. Rusk (1967)
  
• Perez v. Brownell (1958)

Both of them involve voting in foreign elections and the 1940 Naturalization Act. The 14th amendment (think back to Reconstruction) is the other player, though ain't it always? I think they mentioned the fifth amendment also, but I don't recall why.

Here also (because the only thing people want to talk about in my earshot is Iraq) you can find a recent speech by President Bush at the American Enterprise Institute, and here's Dan Rather's interview with Saddam Hussein. I put them here mostly as a reminder to listen to them later when I'm not busy doing important research.

I hopefully will go see Bowling for Columbine on Monday.
posted by Eric at 1:03 PM

Learning to read is important. Don’t let yourself get complacent either. Learn to read new mediums as well. Its an "ancient art" you know.

Once you are a capable reader, you can use that skill to learn the proper way to raise a child.
posted by dave at 11:01 PM

If you care about good music, then you probably want to know when it will be readily available, so that you can pretend to own it legally:

March 18 - Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks: Pig Lib (Matador)
March 25 - Aphex Twin: 26 Mixes for Cash (remixes; 2xCD; Warp)
- Cardigans: Long Gone Before Daylight (Universal)
- Placebo: Sleeping with Ghosts (Virgin)
- Portishead: Alien (Go!Beat)
- Smoking Popes: The Party's Over (Double Zero)
April 15 - White Stripes: Elephant (V2)
April 22 - Pete Yorn: Day I Forgot (Columbia)
May 6 - Blur: Think Tank (Virgin)
- Grandaddy: Sumday (2xCD; Sweat of the Alps)
May 20 - Liz Phair: Happy Tragic Thing (Capitol)
June 1 - Eels: Shootenanny! (DreamWorks)
June 17 - Radiohead: TBA (Capitol)

posted by dave at 3:46 AM

I swear I'm going to get addicted to this Blogger stuff... ah well, I could use another addiction.
You all have been invited to my own Blog, Welcome to Billyburg, where I (and now you all) can chronicle our 7 day wait for the best seats in the house, or just make other commentary on Gator basketball.
Matt, thanks for having me. I'll be sure to keep the porn off here.
posted by Jake at 3:23 AM

As the result of a mistake I made, I had to re-enter a lot of data (grades). This gave me an opportunity to compare my original entry to reality and measure my accuracy. Here are the results of my study. Bear in mind, the task I'm doing is reading a two-digit number, then typing it (via the keypad).

Trials: 215
Mistakes: 2 (two points for a student, and 11 points against)
Error rate: 0.93%
posted by Eric at 10:43 AM

The war-drums are a beatin'. Kentucky v. Florida is ten days away. (Let us not forget, Auburn's up first.)

Stay tuned right here for predictions, commentary, and exciting final-round coverage of, "give that Tubby picture a caption."
posted by Eric at 8:04 AM

C-SPAN II's Book TV has been carrying the entire, limping medium of television on its shoulders for years.

This weekend, I only had a chance to watch one program, a talk by Ross King about his book Michelangelo & The Pope's Ceiling. These are some things I learned:

• Pope Julius II commissioned Michaelangelo to fresco the ceiling of the Sistine chapel at the urging of rival artist Bromante who was setting him up for failure. Frescoing was/is hard to do, and Michaelangelo hadn't done it for 20 years, having made his name as a sculptor.
  
• Saints tended to martyr themselves on swampy ground, greatly inconveniencing reverant chapel-goers. Soon after its construction, they had to use big ugly iron ties in the Sistine chapel to counter-act this. That messed up the ceiling, necessitating a new fresco.
  
• The architect of the Sistine chapel was best-known as a military architect, having supposedly learned how to build battlements that were impervious to cannon bombardment. This was intentional, as the Pope, back in the day, was His Holiness, Divine Ass-Kicker in Italy, and the contemporary Romans, Bolognians, et. al. would often make trouble for him. If you peek real close at the exterior, you can see where the holes through which they would shoot you with arrows or pour boiling oil on your head.
  
• Some fine art came out of that place and time, although I don't know why. It was the patronage of some ruthless folks (This is the era of Machiavelli.) which made it possible.
  
• ... and Zeke's a Gator.
  

posted by Eric at 9:06 AM

In an effort to make big bucks and reach a broader audience, Radiohead has apparently followed the lead of pop sensation J Lo and teamed up with Ben Affleck to show that they are still Radiohead "from the block." As long as Tom Yorke doesn't start wearing a bikini, I am fine with this.

posted by dave at 12:35 AM

“Singer-rapper Fred Durst, an award presenter, of the band Limp Bizkit said he hoped ‘we’re all in agreeance [sic] that this war should go away as soon as possible.’” Thank you Mr. Durst. Just the person that I want preaching politics to me. I did it all for the nookie and world peace.
posted by dave at 4:02 AM

Ok, so I had nothing to say for days...longer. Then I saw John Carpenter's Ghosts of Mars. Still, I had nothing to say. However, now that the effects of the movie have worn off and the blood is slowly returning to my brain and reality is starting to make since again, I find that I have plenty to say. Thanks John. The great thing about John Carpenter (AKA creator of the slasher film series Halloween, AKA the king of crappy horror/action flicks) is that just when he gives you faith that it is not possible to create a film more pathetically awful than his last, he births a bloody puss sack of a movie, slaps his name all over it and makes it widely available for every red-blooded American stupid enough to pay seven bucks to see it.

By my count he has produced two decent movies in his still growing 26 film directorial career, The Thing and Big Trouble In Little China. And that's a bit of an enigma in itself, being that they both star Kurt Russell and its written somewhere in the Bible that he is not allowed to do good movies. I get the impression that Mr. Carpenter doesn't realize how bad he is by the way he proudly litters his name on every possible location of this movie. I was at first impressed to see the line "Music by John Carpenter." However, after seeing the behind the scenes clips on the DVD, the term "Music" apparently refers to bobbing one's head while heavy-metal legends Anthrax, guitar god Steve Vai, and the guitarist, Buckethead, of the newly reincarnated Guns n' Roses actually write scores and perform on instruments. (For those of you like me that are formerly unfamiliar with Buckethead, he wears a face-like mask resembling that of the serial killer Michael Myers from John Carpenter's Halloween. Buckethead claims that Michael inspires all of his music. Oh Yeah, he also wears a big KFC chicken bucket on his head. Now.... after downing a few bottles of cough syrup and banging my head on a wall for about an hour, it's not hard for me to see how this get-up can be a good way to entertain a crowd of people when performing; however, and listen closely kiddies, when you wear a chicken bucket (no matter how recent the model) on your head in a recording studio, you look like a fucking idiot.)

So let me actually talk about this movie because this is a plot that certainly deserves to be mentioned. You see, this is a story that takes place in the future, on a Mars that is being terraformed by Earthlings. It doesn’t take long for them to throw in the first twist. Our society has become matriarchal. We got women running everything. My theory is that this was a ploy to put a bunch of hot girls in tight outfits in this movie. Things got started real nicely when they got Natasha Henstridge (AKA the blonde chick who is always naked AKA deserves an Oscar for her emotional portrayal of a rock) to star in it. Then, the casting director gets acid spilled in his eyes or something and accidentally hires a bunch of out of shape, over 50 years old women to play stealthy army people in tight outfits.

What really makes this movie is that fact that it has rap superstar and my hero, Ice Cube, in it. Unfortunately, I think Cube had a little difficulty acting in a movie that didn’t involve comedy. Every line was delivered like he was trying to make love to the person he was speaking to, which could get a bit disturbing when he was scolding evil zombie-devil-Martian-ghosts. Yet, it made for a nice pairing when placed along side Henstridge's dull droning.

If you are wondering about the actual story, what basically happens is a bunch of ugly people and Natasha Henstridge go to pick up a dangerous prisoner (Ice Cube) from some remote settlement on Mars. It turns out that basically everyone in the settlement but the prisoners have been possessed by ghosts that want to kill everyone on the planet. The prisoners, the ugly people and Natasha decide to team up against the ghost things. Everyone dies except Cube and Natasha and they set off a nuclear bomb to kill the ghosts...........let me repeat that last part. They set off a nuclear bomb to kill some ghosts. Yeah, its stupid and, of course, it doesn't work. They go back to the main settlement, the ghosts follow, Cube gets these sweet chrome-plated machine guns and right when Cube and Natasha are about to go shoot up the billions of ghosts, the movie ends. And oh yeah, Natasha is also secretly a drug addict, but like most everything else in the movie, this is not relevant to anything.

I really liked these ghosts because they see everything as blurry, shaky and red which doesn't sound all that great, but can make for a really impressive camera trick which can be shown again and again and again. At first, I was just blown away by this effect and even by the fifty-gazillionth time they displayed it, I found myself thinking, "Wow, so this is what the ghost is seeing...it's stunning." Also, when the ghosts possess a human, they like to look at their hands a lot. I think this is because of their amazing throwing ability. They utilize this throwing ability whenever about a thousand of them encircle a few humans. They all throw swords and spears and metal disks, purposely missing the humans. After about 10 minutes, one of them throws something that will perfectly sever the head of a human in slow motion. Sure, it looks all random, but after about the thirteenth beheading you start to see the pattern. The best ghost-zombie-poopmonster has to be their leader. He shows his love for Kiss lead singer Gene Simmons by dressing like him and screaming "are you ready to rock?" in ghost-zombie speak the whole movie. This guy just needed to calm down. The real Gene Simmons wouldn't have been so excitable.

Yeah, so I lost a valuable portion of my life to this movie and then I lost more time writing about it. But it's all about learning to cope. Maybe I should just end this by saying that Jesus may have been a carpenter, but John Carpenter is no Jesus.

posted by dave at 4:14 PM

Watched Charlie Chaplin's The Great Dictator last night. Highly recommend it. It was made in 1940, before US involvement in WWII and before the public became aware of the severity of the Holocaust. It is remarkably prescient (props to sist-ah K-Dawg).

(more props...) It combines very serious matters with typical Chaplin stuff. Also, there's a scene in which Hynkel (aka Hitler aka The University of Austin) plays hacky-sack with the world, including several bumps off of his Excellency's ass.

I'm a bit peeved that she made more interesting observations than I did even though she watched only 1/4 of the movie cumulatively.
posted by Eric at 11:09 AM