coffee and beards

Good news for my coffee-loving runner/active friends here.

Things about beards.

burninating the village...

i went on a long bike ride with Asuka and Kelly AT yesterday (Kelly was in town and Asuka let us both tag along, YAY!), and the subject of Trogdor came up. i'm pretty sure it was because i tend to yell 'BIKERRRR' in a manner similar to that of 'TROGDORRRR', with a sort of yelled vocal fry. Neither Asuka nor Kelly had heard of either Trogdor nor Homestar Runner (understandable for Asuka as she was in Japan at the time it was popular). So, Trogdor can be found here. Homestar Runner itself is an online cartoon-type thing, found here, and the Strong Bad emails to which Trogdor originates are here. Also entertaining is the Teen Girl Squad spin-off.

The guys upstairs recently drew Trogdor on the white board; i'll have to get a picture the next time i go develop westerns.

obligation chocolate versus true feeling chocolate

Several things. A recent sighting on my facebook feed described "Japanese Frankenstein shoes" as encountered in a Japanese fashion magazine. i googled this, like-ya-do, and didn't come up with anything sartorially worthwhile, but a wikipedia link to Vampire Girl versus Frankenstein Girl popped up at the top. This is fascinating, and lead to the linking of  honmei chocolate ("true feeling chocolate", apparently that given by women to their significant others on Valentines), as well as it's lower quality counterpart, giri chocolate ("obligation chocolate", given by women to males for whom they don't have romantic feelings. i'm pretty astonished that this is an actual named thing.This lead to White Day, which is when the guys give gifts to ladies.  i suppose spacing out the gift-giving allows for guys to know which ladies to focus on, as well as what sort of gifts to give? Wow.

From the NY Times, an article addressing concerns that marathons are hard on peoples' hearts (basically, they are if you have a pre-standing heart problem), and an article regarding the search and recovery of the body of Micah True/Caballo Blanco (of the Born To Run fame), following a heart attack while running. 

"Hey, (runner) girl". Yes. Favorite? And possibly this one.

some music

For Holly: Regina Spektor article on the NY Times. Also, first listen of the new album on NPR.

Guilty music pleasure: John Mayer. Most of you knew this, and i'm pretty sure that most females my age are fans if only out of nostalgia. It's tied to freshman year in college, singing in the dorm and while driving around with Roommate and Kar. The second half of his Any Given Thursday album was also one of the two (the other being Bruce's Wrapped ) cds i listened to on repeat while in the twilight zone that followed my back surgery.

Particularly fond of: Why Georgia, which i've taken to singing as 'Why, Wisconsin' (" 'Cause i wonder sometimes about the outcome of a still verdict-less life/ Am i living it right? Why, Wisconsin, why?") for obvious reasons.

Comfortable,  pretty much only for the intro, "i just remembered that time at the market/ you snuck up behind me and jumped on my shopping cart/ and rolled down aisle five/ you looked behind you to smile back at me/ crashed into a rack full of magazines/ they asked us if we could leave", which i text to Kar whenever i hear it because the situation completely sounds like something that we would have done.

Despite coming off as a jerk in most of his interviews, the guy actually knows how to play a guitar.

In Your Atmosphere and Try, from the trio cd. Bold as Love and Free Fallin' (which, while covers of Hendrix, whom i also really love, and Tom Petty, respectively, i like better than the originals).

He's got an album coming out tomorrow.


It strikes me that i also need to post something about Stevie Ray Vaughan, but later.

Every once in a while, my classmate Lily emails my cohort and we all end up having wings (Buffalo Wild Wings, because it's a walkable distance from lab and has 50 cent wing night) for dinner. The conversation somehow came around to Taco Bell, and i badly got the combination pizza hut and taco bell song stuck in my head. It's still there. Apparently it wasn't a widespread remix meme, only Holly knew what i was talking about, so it gets posted here.

Kelly AT posted a link on FB regarding the frequencies of American births between 1979 and 1999. September babies. Huh. That particular blog is pretty cool in general; it looks like some dude at NPR makes up a graph every day (during his lunch break?) and posts it there.

Most of us read Neil Gaiman's tumblr (as well as his online journal) on a daily basis, but this article that he linked regarding a gay American president is pretty interesting and i feel worth tossing here.

Finally, ice  blocking. Sunday night? Monday night? Tuesday night? Pretty please?

for Zachary

A rather interesting, semi-relevant article from the Wall  Street Journal regarding gene mapping and human diseases.

pathogens, sandwiches, etc

So, this website tracks outbreaks of various pathogens globally. It appears to cull this information from newspapers and online articles (officially "disparate data sources, including online news aggregators, eyewitness reports, expert-curated discussions and validated official reports")  and updates hourly. Pretty darn cool, and it also is a bit of a black hole, time-wise, as it's searchable both by pathogen as well as by location.

NPR's Sandwich Mondays blog posts are always amusing; a group out at NPR reviews some sort of "protein encased in bread product" in a frequently entertaining fashion.

Additionally, i was recounting this Van Halen dressing room demands story to Asuka during one of our long bike rides a few weeks ago. Curious bit of trivia.

Finally, a pair of stories from the NY Times regarding potential grandparents freezing their spinster daughters' eggs just in case, and genetic issues stemming from conception using donated sperm. Odd juxtaposition, NY Times.

lemon curd and tiny birds

Jack was kind enough to allow me to crash her plans last night involving using up lemon curd. We ended up making a sort of ad hoc tart from Dave Lebovitz's tart shell recipe, dousing the thing with a cream cheese layer, and topping it with the aforementioned lemon curd. i'd never had lemon curd before, and was pleasantly surprised (okay, and cleaning the last smudges out the jar with my fingers, apologies). Jack also graciously let me play Kishi Bashi's NPR Tiny Desk Concert at her during the proceedings. Awesome. Reference his live album here, or specifically Bright Whites. Beatboxings. Yowza.

TAing is an odd thing. All of a sudden you find yourself standing in front of a classroom full of people, some of whom look interested, some of whom are frantically scribbling down what you're saying, some of whom are glancing at the clock or their iPhone every 30 seconds, and you're trying to put words together in the correct order to describe how they make yearly influenza vaccines. i feel like my communication skills ARE getting better, and i'm tons more comfortable in front of a class than i've been in the past. Finals week, yay!

Lately interesting from the NY Times: 11 year old boulderer who's got serious chops. Game Of Thrones actress Natalia Tena interview here. Huh.

That's kinda all i got today.

burma shave signs

Several things;

i was at Derby party this weekend, celebrating the Kentucky Derby as well as a lovely classmate's birthday (Yay, Bryan!) with fantastic fried chicken and mint juleps; several of us wore derby hats. Somehow conversation turned to Illinois roadsigns regarding gun control (promoting guns). These signs read with a simplistic poem, with a verse on a single rectangular sign posted every few yards along a road. i made the statement that this was an incredibly old style of advertisement, but for the life of me, i could not remember what product the ads promoted. It's Burma Shave, and i put it here because i feel like it's a amusing cultural thing. Okay, it's true, i read too many of my grandparents' magazines as a child.

Other things: NY Times articles regarding older skateboarders, nice. Also, yet another article concerning positive links between exercise and it's effect on brainpower.

dean re-mix

In brief, the Mifflin Street Block Party is a local, yearly thing. i've never been, but i've biked past, and it's crazy. As that the majority of the participants are UW-Madison students, the Dean here released a video requesting that students consider not attending. Some creative students took this and made re-mix and dubstep versions. They're pretty impressive, i think. Huffington post picked it up, even.

Those of us not really paying attention found a nice little email in our university email accounts this morning regarding the party, opening with "By now, I'm sure you've probably heard my feelings about May 5th
Mifflin Street block party. Or seen the autotune or dubstep remixes." The email goes on to re-iterate that students please consider their safety. The request is reasonable. The response is creative.

Wow.