so i found this website, Freerice, where you answer vocabulary questions and the UN World Food Program distributes rice to starving people. Sounds great right?

Wrong, it doesn't work half the time. I'll click on the right answer, and it'll say "Sorry, try again" and show what I clicked on. What the hell? "Grouchy" and I'll click "Irritable" and it says "Sorry, try again, grouchy=irritable." I can't find an email on the site, but they need to get this fixed! I tried it with both Firefox and IE, both have issues.

UPDATE: It works now. Donate rice!

so this is pretty funny. Brohemian Rhapsody



The full-size version is better

so a lot of have asked me about the Wackazoid. It is pretty much the most extreme thing ever. The Wackazoid started out as our wiffle ball team mascot. It is from the Planet Wackazoid in some awesome galaxy, and it's everything that is totally extreme to the max. It's a lightning bolt that's on fire, carrying a boombox, surfing, giving the thumbs up, wearing RADICAL sunglasses and wearing a backwards hat. There's a space shuttle. He hangs out with Khan from "Wrath of Khan" and breaks bottles over his nuts. Take that Chester Cheetah.

But aside from looking extreme, it is totally extreme. Check out the Myspace page.

so I'm not sure how I feel about this. Rivals.com has a video section about college football, and a lot of them are hosted by a hot chick. They're kind of interesting and informative, but at the same time, it's like "hey, look at my boobs." Does she know anything about sports? Maybe she's just a talking head. But then again, maybe she really does. Is it a crass marketing technique? Is she really a college football expert? Who knows. I watched some anyway.

so I don't know if I have terrible luck or what, but the Starbucks on New Jersey Ave NW sucks. There's usually a long line, which isn't really their fault, but it always takes forever for me to get my drink. The worst was about a month ago when it took at least 10 minutes to get my drink with a bunch of people behind me getting theirs first. After sitting and waiting then I decided to boycott the place in favor of the one at 7th and Indiana, which is much better. Au Bon Pain is closer, but their drinks are way too sweet.

Today, however, it was raining, so I went to the New Jersey Ave Starbucks - the joke was on me. There wasn't a line, but again, about 5 people behind me got their drinks, so I asked the baristas if mine was coming. One of them said "nobody ordered that," and I said "I did." So she made it and plopped it down without saying anything. I said "is this the pumpkin" and she didn't respond, so I said "Thank you very much" loudly and walked out. That place sucks.

so I like soccer. I like the US national team, which kind of means I am a glutton for punishment. But they actually won yesterday, beating Switzerland 1-0. And the Swiss are not as bad as you might think, they did pretty well at the last World Cup, they were 3-0-1 before losing to the Ukraine in the round of last 16.

The US team had a lot of guys I'm not familiar with (GK Brad Guzan, Dan Califf, Danny Szetela, Benny Feilhaber, Michael Bradley, Heath Pearce, Robbie Findley) but the team won thanks to Bradley's goal. He's also the coach's son. But I guess a new lineup is good, considering how bad the US team was in the last world cup (no wins, two losses and a tie).

I was happy to see no Landon Donovan, as he is terrrrrible internationally for some reason - both at the World Cup and in his brief, awful stint with Bayer Leverkusen in Germany. At Leverkusen, he couldn't crack the starting lineup and bitched at his coach during games, which led the fans to hate him. I really think he makes the US look bad, because he's good in the MLS, but stinks in Europe, so folks think that the MLS is a bad, bad league. But apparently he's done OK lately for the national team.

And while I'm bitching, I think Oguchi Onyewu has been a bust. He got a lot of hype before the World Cup, and he was really bad in it, committing a foul in the penalty box, which Ghana then converted for the win. And he was bad in the Switzerland game too: "Oguchi Onyewu also was at fault for a few aimless long balls from the back as the U.S. team struggled to carve out any scoring opportunities in the first half." He's still young though, so maybe he'll improve.

But anyway, hooray US.

Photo by Pius Koller, isisports

so this is a pretty good jam and clever video. It's "Take me Home" by Brother Ali, a rapper who happens to be a blind albino Muslim. No, really. Check it out.

TJ
Originally uploaded by squidpants

So TJ Miller, a guy I know from GW, is on the ABC show "Carpoolers." The "Living with Carpoolers" video on their site is actually about him, and it's pretty funny. When he moved to LA he lived with Jerry O'Connell, one of the stars, who says a lot of funny stuff about him. And O'Connell is married to Rebecca Romijn (no longer Stamos) too. Not a bad deal.

Anyway, on the show TJ plays Marmaduke, the lazy/dumb son of Fred Goss and Faith Ford's characters, who sits around all day in his underwear. He actually never wears pants on the first episode. Check out the show, which is OK, though TJ's parts are pretty good. And there are a couple other random pics on my Flickr.

And here's TJ back in the day as part of GW's recess comedy group. He's the one in the blue.

so I got a bunch of free CDs recently. One of them is "The Else," the 12th album by They Might Be Giants. Like many people of generation Y or whatever it is my generation is called these days, I used to be a huge fan of TMBG, having all their albums up to "Mink Car." At that point, and also like a lot of people my age, my interest started to wane. I still appreciate them but I never really listen to any of it anymore, and while the newer music is solid, to me it lacks that quirky fire their old stuff used to have. That's understandable, considering they, and their audience, have aged and even matured (arguably not in my case though).

This album is mostly solid pop songs, pretty straightforward musically but with the trademark quirky/hard to understand lyrics. It doesn't seem too earth-shattering the first time I listened to it, but many of the songs grew on me with repeated listens. "Climbing the Walls," an ode to working, sounds like it could have been on the "John Henry" album, but has one of the Johns (can never tell which is which) expanding his vocal range, which is neat to hear.

"Take Out the Trash" is led by bouncy bass, "With the Dark" varies genres and kooky bits quickly, and "I'm Impressed" has a more indie rock sound than I'm used to from them. "The Shadow Government" is one of the better tracks on the album, it's more overtly political than most of their songs, wishing the shadow government had taken over the U.S., and it reminds me of Teenage Fanclub with the refrain "it's a bad bad world." Plus the song starts with the line "driving home from my meth lab," which is pretty funny.

"Bee of the Bird of the Moth" is typical goofiness, as the title attests, and "The Mesopotamians" is this album's "James K. Polk" or "Meet James Ensor," songs about relatively obscure people. This one talks about ancient kings of the area and some other historical places, like Mohenjo-Daro. However, it's not quite as interesting musically as those two previous songs and kind of seems like a retread, trying to be fun and random like the others, but not working.

But it's a solid album, and I liked it more than I thought I would. The songs grow on you and it has the usual good musicianship and songwriting of their other albums. Check it out if you were a TMBG fan, you might like them again.

so I went to the City Paper's Crafty Bastards fair this sunday, it was alright. There was some neat stuff, but a lot of it was too expensive for my bones (which admittedly are fairly cheap) and half the booths were cute monsters - stuffed ones, prints, shirts etc, of cute squids, ghosts, and various other monsters. Observe: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14.

But hey, it was fun and something to do. Just next time, fewer monsters, or at least more variety.