Another fun game to play!

I was perusing the 'net as usual, and I came across a really fun "Can you guess where my accent is from" game. But, for the life of me, I couldn't remember from where. TGFG (thank God for Google should seriously be an acronym inducted into Merriam-Webster or at least Urban Dictionary; we should definitely be more thankful for Google than Fridays any-damn-way)!

Play the game here. I wasn't very good. And if by "not very good" I mean terrible. I think I scored a 12 or something.

Just sayin'...

After the Bengals' dismal 0-8 start to the 2008 NFL season, it seemed they were doomed to being the cellar dwellers of the AFC North (if not the entire league). I suppose it's not too shabby for the Bengals to go 4-3-1 after a winless first half of the season, especially since – no thanks to having 23 players on IR – a number of positions were being played by players as far down as third on the depth chart; not to mention while playing without our 2006 Pro Bowl MVP. The solid ending (to what could have been a historically bad season) has given the players and coaches a boost for next season, while still holding on to a good draft pick come April. Another good thing? The Thumbs Down Browns sunk to the bottom of the division thanks to losing their six final games.

I love organizing my iTunes!

It brings back so many memories. It is crazy how a song from the past can trigger such nostalgia! It's just like giving your bedroom a thorough cleaning and finding old notes and pictures.

Here are a few throwback artists (think high school and maybe the first year of college) I've gone through so far and it's only the beginning:

• The All-American Rejects
• Brand New (Your Favorite Weapon & Deja Entendu)
• Dashboard Confessional (albums up to A Mark, A Mission, A Brand, A Scar)
• The Juliana Theory (Emotion is Dead)
• Taking Back Sunday (Tell All Your Friends)

I also forgot about how much I love Death Cab.

I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday, and those who celebrate Hanukkah continue to enjoy the celebration :)

Bungals vs. Clowns; the battle of who's worse in Ohio

My brother always hates on Leon Hall, who plays CB for the Bengals. He thinks he's terrible, although he really is not that bad and is clearly a few steps up from that bum (Deltha O'Neal) who played for us a couple of seasons ago. Anywho, I had to work at 5:30am this morning until 2pm this afternoon, so I missed the entire first half. My brother texted me the update at half: 14-0 Bengals; one TD pass to Chris Henry and an INT return by Leon Hall.

I will give you the exact textversation:

Me: Your boy... Ha
Jason: Ha tru

[Leon Hall gets his second INT of the day]

Me: There goes your boy again
Jason: Ha tru. Only against a JV qb tho

[Leon Hall gets his third INT of the day]

Me: Hahahahaha
Jason: More like an 8th grade qb haha

I just thought that was hilarious. The Bengals vs. Clowns is really only the battle of who's worse in the state of Ohio, and the game really isn't meant to be anything but a boost of morale. The Bengals ended up shuting out the Browns 14-0, making this the first time the Browns have been shut out at home since 2006 (against the Bengals). The battle for who's worse in Ohio is the only thing Cleveland won yesterday.

Rob Pattinson got his hairs cut

And, though his longer locks are his signature look, he looks extremely hot with this shorter 'do.

Photos Courtesy of PerezHilton.com

Sunny and 62 in beautiful Cincinnati!

On Tuesday it took me an hour and a half to get home from a place that usually only takes fifteen minutes (Blue Ash Road to my house in Finneytown for those who are familiar). Why? Because we got a little less than an inch of snow dumped on us in less than thirty minutes and -of course- everyone freaked out. Sure, the roads were kind of bad, but let's get real party people, way too many folks go overboard and get way too carried away thinking the slightest bit of accumulation is going to snowball (puns are amazing) into "WHITE DEATH 2008!" I digress.

Let's get to the point:
Snow is currently still on the ground in Vegas and the current temperature in SoCal is 56º. It is warmer here than both of those places. A couple of friends of mine moved from Central Ohio to Vegas a few years ago, so they are clearly accustomed to snow. I'll share with you our conversation, which I found quite hilarious:

me: haha, snow in vegas and it's 62 degrees in cincinnati today!
him: screw you it is still here
me: crazy!
him: your telling me they closed the schools yesterday, carrie got a snow day
me: that's awesome ... were people freaking out? i mean, obvi you guys are used to it...
him: of course they stopped playing normal shows and ran a news special all night. i was pissed. i missed my heroes and top chef
me: people just get way too carried away
him: i was doing like 50 on the highway, and people were looking at me like i was the anti-christ while they went like 25
me: hahahahahahahahaha



In case you are geographically disabled, I have highlighted where Cincinnati is on the map. Check out the numbers at the North of the state (that's only about a 3+ hour drive). Man, it must suck to be from Cleveland!

Like Fonts?

Try playing the Rather Difficult Font Game over at (iLT)! I got a 28/34 and scored myself a spot in the Hall of Fame. It is 'rather difficult' but a great time to play. Just use process of elimination. Happy Fonting!

History repeating itself?

When Northwestern defeated Michigan, 21-14, in football Nov. 15 at Michigan Stadium, Northwestern alumnus Joe Girardi sent a text message to Derek Jeter, who attended Michigan for one semester in 1992. "The last time Northwestern won at Michigan [1995], the Yankees won four of the next five World Series," Girardi wrote.

Jeter responded: "Thank you for providing a silver lining to my misery."

"Yanks improve rotation, keep young talent"

Buster Olney's blog on espn.com brings up some very valid points that I hope will shut the mouths of all the Yankees naysayers/haters, and to review: The Yankees will be younger, cheaper and deeper, and maybe better.

Read the entire entry here.

The silver lining in fulfilling my childhood dream

When I was younger I was obsessed with tornadoes. It was a sick obsession and it was all I thought about throughout my grade school years. I recorded (on VHS of course, pausing during commercials to have a commercial-free recording) many education programs and documentaries, as well as the great films such as Twister and Night of the Twisters (Devin Sawa=heaven). When I was about in sixth or seventh grade, a few of my friends teamed up with my brother's friend and hid my copy of Twister from me. I guess they got annoyed that, every time I had a sleepover, we had to watch Twister. It was my childhood dream to be a Meteorologist and Storm Chaser, and because I was so knowledgeable on the subject, I even got to teach the Meteorology section to my freshman Earth Science class.

I still try to catch as many National Geographic Channel Presents and Weather Channel specials regarding the phenomenon, but clearly I have chosen a completely different career path.

As I was watching a NatGeo Presents special about tornadoes this morning, image my elation upon learning about Silver Lining Tours. I will be going as soon as I save up the funds; probably within the next five years. Seriously. I can't wait!

It's love [enter love-stricken ga-ga eyes here].

For the first time, I am reporting from my brand-spanking-new, eco-friendly MacBook Pro. There are so many perks about this little guy that I can't even begin to describe. I never thought I could love another the way I did my Powerbook, but I do. But my first will always hold a special place in my heart:

Image + Witty Tagline ≠ Good Design

I was surfing the 'net (as usual) when I came across this really great piece by Marian Bantjes. [Side note: if you don't know who she is, I suggest you at least check out what Wikipedia has to say about her by clicking on her name] Most, if not all, of her work is absolutely incredible, especially because she typically–and obsessively–creates them first by hand drawing them with extreme detail before recreating them in a vector-based program (which I can only assume would be Illustrator, but I suppose I could be wrong). I had the opportunity to meet her (and score some swag!) when she appeared as a guest speaker at BGSU, and she is just about as awesome as her work, especially because she doesn't even have a formal education in design; she's just that talented.

Anywho, I saw a piece that she created that explains what influences her and her work. I know that I am highly influenced by pop culture and maps (among other things), but wow, this is intense. You may want to click on it so you can see it larger to get the full effect.


As I'm reading her website, there are some Q & A that I find both entertaining and extremely insightful, one of those being:

What pisses you off most in the design world?
The mistaken belief that image+witty tagline = good design.

Also, I found a really great quote that she wrote in her "What I Say About Myself" section because it sounds just like me:

I do not know if I am lazy or driven. A little of both. While I tend to work every day, from morning to night (I’m frequently working past midnight), my days are relatively stress free. In the summer I tend to take a lot of breaks and sit in the sun or go for a walk. I spend a lot of time thinking. Just staring into space and thinking. Does this count as work? Sometimes. When I wake up in the morning with the perfect solution to a given problem, have I been working while I was sleeping? Perhaps.

(I've bolded the fragments that apply.)

Move Over Mr. Warhol

artist
1 one skilled or versed in learned arts
2 one who professes and practices an imaginative art
3 a skilled performer
4 one who is adept at something

Artists express emotion through their work. Real artists manipulate and change their style in order to effectively convey those emotions. What is an artist if he or she doesn't expand his or her means for expression? Surely not inventive. Surely not original. Surely not creative.

For those who have been hating on Kanye's new CD (808s & Heartbreak), imagine having gone through your mother's death as well as a broken engagement in the same year. Try to rap about it and have it convey the true, raw emotion of sadness and hurt. 10 of his 11 songs touch on the subject of his broken engagement. The other song? About his mother's death.

"THIS ISN'T A HIP-HOP RECORD. I SING ON ALL THE SONGS. I WANTED A POP ALBUM."

I've heard enough of "how is he being creative when he's just getting that voice thing from T-Pain?" It's called Auto- Tune, and Kanye uses it for a lot of the vocals throughout the album. This machine manipulates the voice, making it sound more robotic, much to the same effect as Cher's hit from 1998, "Believe," which is a Grammy Award-winning, multi-platinum single. So if anyone wants to talk about who Kanye's ripping off of, aim for accuracy and give dues to whom they belong; it's the Cher effect.

"BUT YOU DO GET THE IMPRESSION THAT, HAVING CONQUERED HIP-HOP, HE MIGHT BE AFTER MICHAEL JACKSON'S KING-OF-POP CROWN."

"I don't know what hip-hop's problem with pop music is: pop has given us the best musical moments ever. The Beatles were pop. I wanted to use my position as the biggest hip-hop artist around to make a statement on this record. You know, hip-hop now is the most cred thing you can do. And I'm a black guy, and I'm from Chicago, so I have a lot of cred stuff going on for me, but at every step I like to stand back and just get people to open their minds up.

With fashion, I said, through what I was wearing, that is ok to dress stylishly again. I also said that people shouldn't bash gay people - that we need to be respectful of gay people. And now I want to say: "It's ok to like pop music.

As little kids, we all listened to pop music - when and why did it become a bad thing? With this album, I've invented a new genre called 'Pop Art', which is not to be confused with the visual art movement. I think I'm producing pop, but in an artistic way."

Move over Mr. Warhol, Kanye West is taking Pop Art to an entirely new level.

[Read Kanye West's entire interview with the Irish Times here]