Where is it?

Picture the scene, it's just before lunch on a Friday, a Good Friday no less, and you get up from your desk and go to the toilet. (For the remainder of the story to work, you have to imagine you're male.) In you go, walk up to the urinal, undo your flies and start looking (or I guess feeling — as you tend to be able to this sort of thing without actually looking) for your, ahem, member. A few seconds go by and you are still looking (feeling), where is the convenient hole in your boxer shorts? Eventually you lean forwards and have a gander at what is going on inside your trousers. The convenient hole is, inconveniently, missing. After solving the how to piss problem, you realise that yes you did in fact put your underwear on back to front this morning.

Now I'm not saying that actually happened to me today, but if by some chance it did... I would have to wonder how drunk/hungover/tired/asleep/stupid (delete as you think applicable) I was when I was getting dressed this morning. I'm pretty sure I've always managed to figure out how to put a pair of boxer shorts on before.

Goaty nonsense

Now I don't want to read the story because I'll only be disappointed when I find out this isn't about Mr Gates's MS, but I do like the headline Goat blood drug 'offers MS hope'.

Dumbing down?

I just discovered a new part of the BBC news website, called NEWSwatch. One of the features they have shows you which are they most popular stories on the BBC News site.

Yesterday the two most popular stories were about a couple who had a pork pie wedding cake (from the UK edition) and one entitled "Chewing Gum can 'enhance breasts'" (from the World edition). It's nice to see the sophistication of the average web user shining through.

Excellence, donkeys and tea strainers

It really is quite a gloomy looking today (or at least it was before night fell). I do wish the weather would get it's arse in gear and either be nice and sunny or start bucketing it down with rain. All this in between, overcast nonsense is very tiresome.

Despite the weather I am feeling inexplicably upbeat today. My mood can be partly put down to Jolie Holland, and her really rather excellent Escondida album... Well I fell in love with a boy who has a real live romance with a train. Music is particularly nice this week as I've got the office all to myself, so I've been able to use speakers instead of headphones. I think that Escondida may well be my favourite album of the last 12 months, at the moment I'd say it was a toss up between that and Kanye West's The College Dropout.

I watched Dogville this weekend. I remember wanting to go see it when it came out in Geneva a couple of years ago, but for some reason I didn't get round to watching it. I was surprised at how well the chalk lines on the floor, for scenery, worked. I'd thought it might have been too distracting, but found myself entirely willing suspend disbelief. I was saddened to hear that they had removed the butchered donkey scenes from the next film in the trilogy, Manderlay, as Lars Von Trier didn't want the row about it to overshadow the film. I'm not saddened because I particularly want to see butchered donkey (the cow is something of a one off for me), or because I worry that the donkey died in vain, but just because if the director wanted to have scenes of a dead donkey in his film then I think he should be able to. But I suppose when there are so many people with so little to do and so much time on their hands, they have to find things to kick up a fuss about.

In other news, Deadwood is still absolutely bloody brilliant. And for any readers of the male persuasion aren't you pleased that you live in a day and age where there are better methods than sticking a thin metal rod up (or should that be down) your penis to discover whether or not you have kidney stones in your bladder. Although I imagine it would not be a good deal more pleasant if you come equipped with female plumbing.

Incidentally, I was just looking at a kidney stones webpage which included the following: The doctor usually asks you to save the passed stone(s) for testing. (You can catch it in a cup or tea strainer used only for this purpose.). I really quite like the parenthetical addition, although I'm fairly convinced I could piss through a tea strainer and then remember to thoroughly wash it before I used it for its more usual purpose.)

Red Lake Sunset

Another day, another school shooting (well fortunately, they don't come every day). I find it some what bizarre that this one happened somewhere that I've actually been to, well driven through at least. (It was on the road from Itasca State Park to the Red Lakes that we saw the cow.) I remember thinking as we driving through the little town of Red Lake, with it's big prevent alcoholism sign as you enter, that I would go mad if I lived there for any length of time. Of course, by that stage I was into month three of my Minnesota winter, so I was already a little crazy myself.

Anyhow, here's what I think of when I think of the Red Lakes (taken from the end of the peninsula between them).


From the BBC News website:

The FBI said it was too early to speculate on a motive for the shootings, but Weise's fellow pupils said he was teased because he always dressed in black.

I'm not sure quite how one is meant to interpret that. Are they suggesting he shot them because he wore black, or because he was teased for wearing black? Either way you have to love a sentence that starts with The FBI said it was too early to speculate... and ends with speculation. Not knowing, or really wanting to know, any of the facts, I'm going with the Chris Rock theory: he was crazy.

To reside or not to reside, that is the question...

...my answer was no three times and maybe/sort of the other time. I am, of course, talking about the inexplicably un-understandable world of US tax forms. You'd think it would be an easy question, it's one of the first questions that they ask on all of the forms (I've filled out four so far, and can't quite work out if I need to fill out a fifth), but I'm buggered if I can work out where I'm a resident and where I'm a non-resident.

The only thing I know for sure is that as far as the federal government is concerned, I am a non-resident alien — which is a lovely way to describe somebody, really makes you feel welcome. If I'm still around this time next year I get promoted/demoted to resident alien — which, I guess, is sort of like a resident DJ in a club, only much cooler. I'm pretty sure that as far as lovely little State College is concerned I am also a non-resident (which is good as it means my tax rate drops from 2.25% to 1%). When it comes to Pennsylvania I plumped for non-resident, based solely on the fact that I ticked that box last year, well that and I know I'm not getting a refund from them so it pretty much doesn't matter which box I tick.

Then I came to the incredibly, for me at least, confusing Ohio tax form, after much umming and ahhing I decided to plump for part-year resident. You'd think somewhere on the State of Ohio tax website, or the Ohio State international scholars tax website, they'd mention whether or not Ohio considers dirty foreigners, such as myself, residents or non-resident. And you'd be wrong. Once we'd jumped over, or maybe through, this first hurdle and got to question one proper, I was confused again. Instead of asking me to fill out the amount of money I was paid as listed on my W-2, they asked me what I wrote in box 36 of my federal tax form. The problem being that they actually meant box 35 on my federal tax form, as I get to fill in the non-resident one. Several blind guesses and table head thumps later, and I ended up claiming that Ohio owes me $86 (although I did offer to donate ten of those dollars to the cute little endangered animals), we'll have to wait and see if they agree with me.

As far as I can tell, I don't have to fill out a Columbus tax return. Using their look for the biggest number on your W-2, double it and divide by a hundred (okay I could have just said times by 2%) method, I've paid the right amount of tax here. I particularly like how they instruct you to look for the largest number on the W-2.

By this stage I'm just thoroughly fed up with filling out bloody forms, and if it wasn't for the fact that (I think) the thieving bastards owe me some seven hundred odd dollars between them, I'd have given it all up as a bad game a long time ago.

In further proof that Benjamin Franklin was right, yesterday also saw me purchase Funeral by Arcade Fire. Okay, I agree that's a tentative link at best, but we do what we can. I also bought, on the recommendation of Thea Gilmore, Escondida by Jolie Holland. I've not really had enough time to fully form an opinion of either album, but I have a sneaking suspicion I'm going to end up liking them both rather a lot, particularly the Jolie Holland album.

For those on tenterhooks waiting for news of the bar downstairs (notice how it's the bar and not my bar, it's been a good few weeks since I've had anything more than my free Sunday night beer club beer there) a couple of nights ago I thought that somebody had gone and done something rather rash. I was sat upstairs in my apartment, as I'm wont to do every now and again, and then there was this siren and these flashing lights and a great big fire truck pulled up in front of my apartment. My first thought when I saw the fire engine was of one of the recently departed employees, not that I think they'd burn the place down but I remember them saying that if anything bad happened to the bar they'd get the blame after vocally wishing ill on the place. Fortunately, for both them and myself, there was no raging inferno as I think I'd be more than a little bit fucked if my apartment burned down.

Okay, enough rambling for now.

The Joy of GIMP

You know how it is. It's gone six o'clock on a Monday afternoon and you can't quite motivate yourself to do any more work, but you're not quite ready to either go home or go to the gym. So what do you do? One option is to stumble across a web article, which I've now handily misplaced (ooh, found it again), about how you can enhance your photos by selectively colourizing (the OED can't decide if it's a word, so I can't decide how to spell it) parts of them using GIMP. This seems like a good way to waste a few minutes.

Off you go hunting through your back catalogue of photos, until you find one which might look striking if it was selectively coloured. The first one that seems to match the bill is not an original idea, by any stretch of the imagination, but then again red, white and blue does provide a nice contrast to black and white. I think I took this photo when I visited Bellefonte with Mumsie last year. So here we are; someone's flag in all its glory.



As pretty as the flag picture is, somehow it just doesn't scream Ryan did this at you. So I was thinking, what photograph do I have that really epitomises me-ness? Of course, there was only ever going to be one answer to that question. If red, white and blue looks good what about some black, white and red?



Now, I think you'll agree, that certainly is lot more Ryan-esque. And to think they said I had no artistic talent when I was at school.