My Phone, My Phone 22:49

My phone, my phone... You've been with me for 19 long months, but you're falling apart. I know that everyone in the world has a crappy phone, but this thing's given me exceptional trouble. I think that it's a wonder that it's stayed in one piece so long. It's an LG enV, and this is the second LG phone I've had that's been a trooper for two years despite some pretty harrowing circumstances. (The first was a VX3200, may she rest in peace.)

How do I hate thee, phone? Let me count the ways...

• Your battery slot has always been a point of contention between us, phone. And things started so well, too! But about eight months in, you kept shutting off intermittently, without warning. Your shut-offs seemed completely random -- I could do nothing to make you do it for the Verizon store people on command. (You're really rather difficult.) Nevertheless, however, the Verizon staff thought you had a bad battery, and so they gave me a new one. Of course, even with a brand-new battery, your random shut downs got, if anything, more frequent. I begged and begged for you to stop, but you wouldn't. I would miss call after call, and text after text, and I would eventually resign myself to checking you every five minutes or so, just to make sure you were on.
  
  Finally, one day, I figured it out: the receiver slot for your battery was too lose, and your battery had too much room to move and slide around, leading to a lost connection between the phone and the battery's output. So I folded up a sheet of paper and stuck it inside of you, between the inside of the battery and the phone, and this worked! Until one day when I dropped you (I apologize profusely) and the battery wouldn't snap into place at all. That is the reason I adorned you with such ugly Scotch tape: you need it to keep your battery in place. I know, I know, I've seen people stare, and I know they point and ask questions and laugh at you, but it's the only way.
  
  
• One day, some ghastly dark scanlines appeared on your front screen. I didn't know what to do, so I assumed that time and a little rest would fix your ailment. Not so -- your front screen is now completely broken. I assume this is the phone equivalent of being blind, and I can't imagine your pain. I must say, however, it's a real pain not being able quickly glance at you to check the time, see who's calling, or fire off a quick "ok" text message at a red light.
  
  
• I don't mean to call you crazy, because these things tend to happen with old age, but I am afraid that your circuitry might be a bit... off. You may have a few wires crossed. Why do I think so? No reason in particular, except for the fact that every time I make a left parenthesis, you add an exclamation point and a right parenthesis without explanation. So, I type ( and get (!). Same with quotation marks: I type " and get "b&c" ... I just grin when your little Alzheimer's-like quirks ruin a text message. It's still not as bad as Sammy H's T9 memory insisting on "28" instead of "at," but it's cringe-worthy no less.
  
  
• Your camera lens appears to have glaucoma; all of your pictures -- and all of my TwitPics -- turn out fuzzy and washed-out because of all of the dust on it. I try to clean your lens but most of the dust is on the inside.

No Spelling Allowed 12:07

I am in an unfortunate position shared by many around the world, and especially by Americans: I have a last name I have to spell. Every time.

No, you wouldn't think that "Party" is a name that would give people trouble—it's a pretty standard English word—but every time I need to give my name, I have to spell it or they get it wrong. And I'm not alone. Anyone with a last name that is anything outside the basic set of English names, or anyone with any kind of spelling quirk in their name, more or less needs to spell it every single time. If you fall into either of those last categories: I feel for you, man! We are brothers in name-spelling! It is time for us to commiserate!

Those with easy names don't understand us. Whether you're a Harrison, a Smith, a Jackson, a Johnson... or a James, a Thomas, a Miller, an Anthony... you have it made. You don't need to repeat your name 12 times when you're ordering a pizza. You don't need to spell it. You don't need to know the NATO Phonetic Alphabet. You don't need a go to "X as in Y" for every letter in your name. You don't need to correct substitute teachers, waiting room attendants, and hostesses. You just prance through life, oblivious to the blind frustration shared by the Rzepecskis, the Albaladejos, the Snavelys, the Oots, the van der Berghs, the McKeevers, the Costellos... the list goes on.

What I'd give for a last name I didn't have to spell!

Open Pool: Thursday 11:13

I'm in a pool for the 2009 (British) Open Championship; we pick six golfers, five have to make the cut, and lowest combined top 5 wins. Tiebreaks are winner and winning score. My brother and I are in for five bucks each and we stand to split a pot around $200 if we win.

My golfers this year are going to finally win me this pool -- I've been doing it for every major for 5 years to no avail. My brother and I put six whole minutes of thought into this so we'd better win this time.

2009 Open golfers, and Thursday scores:

• Tiger Tiger Woods, y'all: +1
• Sergio García: E
• Paul Casey: -4 (through 7!)
• Kenny Perry: +1
• Ian Poulter: +2 -- come on, man!
• Steve Stricker: -4 BITCHES
• Total (with Casey yet to finish): -4 -- i.e., ridiculously good

I'll keep posting updates throughout the weekend because I KNOW this is terribly interesting. Wish me luck!

Making Luck 00:57

Monday nights this summer consist of three things that are very dear to me: golf, beer, and pitch. Two of these things require a combination of luck and skill to be successful. (The odd man out is beer, which requires no luck whatsoever to be enjoyable.) I'm a pretty good card player and a pretty lousy golfer, but I try to take it all with a grain of salt, no matter what happens. Still, I find myself getting frustrated more and more frequently by bad things that I mostly chalk up to bad luck. There are stretches where the cards simply will not fall my way, and sometimes golf balls seem to take ridiculous bounces and ricochets to land in impossible lies when I hit them. I wonder why -- what have I done to warrant such terrible karma in the form of unlucky cards / golf lies? Why is my luck so rotten all the time?

This isn't exactly earth-shattering, but I've come up with a few conclusions. The first is that most things -- especially random playing cards in pitch -- will tend to regress toward the mean over time. If I played 10,000 games of pitch and kept data on the comparative quality of each hand, the data would almost certainly translate to a bell curve. (And, indeed, tonight I broke my streak and ended up with unbelievable cards.) The same concept applies to golf. For every time a ball of mine teeters on a bunker's edge and falls back in, or bounces off three tress and lands behind me, there have been plenty of other shots to which I paid no particular mind that went very well, including the occasional lucky bounce or lie.

I also have begun to think more and more lately that true "luck" is almost completely absent from games of human activity like golf and pitch. While sometimes I might get on cold streaks with cards or suffer from lousy bounces and lies playing golf, this isn't an accident. "Luck" in these games isn't really lucky -- luck is a product of skill. If I were a better golfer and I put in more time practicing at the driving range, I would be a better player. I'd hit the ball straighter and with more power. I wouldn't find the need to complain about a ball that just happened to nestle into really thick grass, because if I were a good golfer, I wouldn't need that kind of lucky -- I'd just never be in that situation at all. Good golfers hitting the ball in the fairway need much less luck.

Something that is strictly lucky, to me, is something that nobody has any control over. Sitting here thinking about it, it's hard to even come up with an example of something that's totally lucky. I suppose the weather is almost completely random, and if a rainy forecast is beaten out by a sunny day, that is lucky because there is nothing at all anybody could have done to make that happen. Pitch, for those who don't know, is a bidding, trick-taking card game. You bid who can take the most "points," and the one who bids the highest gets to set the trump suit. Therefore, I could just say that I'm unlucky that I haven't gotten many face cards when I'm not scoring a lot, but it could also be a product of my not choosing to bid very often, leaving the upper hand with my partner or the other team. One of my opponents happens to bid a lot, allowing him to choose whatever trump suit he desires. I always get on his case for picking up "lucky" bids, but the fact that he influenced the game in his favor actually takes away the "luck" factor in this. The cards might be random, but the human aspect of the game most certainly isn't. His bidding swings luck into his favor.

I need to remember this in the future. It's not to say that I should bid on every pitch hand I receive, or that I should spend hours hacking away on the driving range. I just have to remember that what I think is bad luck might actually be facilitated by what I am (not) doing.

If I Were Space Emperor... 22:38

At right: Clinton Declares Self President for Life, from the Onion in 2000

We all hate dictators here in America (unless we've installed them and propped them up), but you have to admit, being a dictator wouldn't be so bad. You can see why people would want to be a dictator, and why they would want to hang onto the position: you could have or do whatever the hell you want. With that in mind, I've given some thought lately to what mandates I would impose if I were Dictator of the World (or, better yet, Space Emperor [of Space]).

• Shotgun, no blitz, for life - People always fight over shotgun, because, honestly, who wants to ride in the back? The best conversation in the car is almost invariably between the two people in the front seat, and yeah, the leg room. So, instead of fighting with little brothers, my mom, or foreign dignitaries over front seat privileges, I could automatically trump any and all "shotgun" claims with my global law: I have shotgun, no blitz, for life.
  Punishment for noncompliance: death.
  
  
• Worldwide Plunger Network - Cut from the same cloth as my Worldwide Umbrella Network idea: every toilet in the entire world needs to have a working plunger next to it. Period. This isn't really a "network" because nobody's taking the plungers anywhere. They're just there: one plunger for each toilet in the world. No more awkwardly asking your friends for a plunger. You just unclog the toilet yourself, and that's that.
  Punishment for noncompliance: death.
  Punishment for stealing a plunger: torture, and then death.



• No more unforgivably bad covers of classic songs in car commercials - Perhaps the most famous incident of this was Saved by Zero, the enduring image of the 2009 World Series. But -- and I'm speaking without really having much outside of casual memories to go off -- there have been far too many classic rock songs bastardized in car commercials by new singers of the opposite sex, squeaky-clean instrumentals, and a general dumbed-down sound. Was the original "Space Oddity" not good enough for your commercial, Lincoln MKS? Just had to do it again with identical instrumentation and an inferior singer? Hm.
  Punishment for noncompliance: death at hands of original artist.

Adventures in Hypercorrection: Slash vs. Backslash 22:13

What's with the recent craze of giving websites as "twitter dot com backslash girardiparty"? This is hypercorrection at its finest. A backslash is this little guy: \ . He shares a key with the vertical bar | and you've probably seen him in your Windows filenames, and uh... that's about it. (Read more about our friend the backslash here.) The thing you see in http://www.google.com/ig is just a "slash" and should be referred to as such.

For instance: today on Yankees radio (ugh), John Sterling gave the website for a promotion as "W-W-W dot metlife dot com backslash yankees." And he's been saying the same thing the whole season. If an astute MetLife advertising person were listening, he'd realize Sterling is technically sending his listeners to here: http://www.metlife.com\yankees (don't feel like clicking the link? Here's a hint: 404'd!) For the sake of completeness, I also tried the link with a "slash" and, whaddaya know, the page Sterling described came up at http://www.metlife.com/yankees.

This isn't only a rip on John Sterling, because I've heard this on tons of commercials and announcements lately. It's the same sort of thing as people saying "They gave it to him and me -- WAIT I MEAN HIM AND I LOL." For whatever reason -- it really is kind of interesting -- we just assign little labels of correctness to things, and I get the feeling that the longer or stuffier something sounds, the more likely it is that someone who doesn't know any better will choose it. I probably make lots of usage and typographic mistakes -- and just generally botch things of all sorts -- but I try to make an honest effort to understand what I'm saying rather than not knowing and going with whatever sounds best.

Not that I'm totally pedantic or anything.

If crap like this bothers you, too, I'd recommend reading the book Eats, Shoots, and Leaves by Lynne Truss. It's part punctuation lesson and part ranting on the state of borderline illiteracy in the US and UK, and it's worth a look even if you don't really need the lessons. Seeing vigilante Sharpie-drawn apostrophe graffiti on posters for the movie Two Weeks Notice [sic] was my favorite part of the book by far.

OK, that's two posts in a row about picky typography things. Done with that for a while.

Dodging a Hyphenated Bullet 10:51

It's certainly too early to make jokes at Steve McNair's expense -- and there will probably never be a time where that is acceptable. But an ESPN headline about McNair's unfortunate death really brings to light something that amateur journalists sometimes don't understand: PUNCTUATION MATTERS.



That's a screencap of ESPN's recent headlines. Check out the first one. "McNair slaying investigators await gun tests." Not the most well-written headline I've ever seen, but it gets the job done. Now imagine you were untrained in the art of the hyphen and decided that "McNair" and "slaying" should be joined together.

"McNair-slaying investigators await gun tests."

Technically, a hyphen indicates a compound adjective, so that headline would in other words read: "The investigators that slayed McNair await gun tests."

I just thought that was a strange little headline, and it made me think of so many god-awful student papers that could and probably would badly misconstrue the information.

Race to 100 Votes 01:47

I check ESPN.com all the time, just because it's there and I like sports and maybe Bill Simmons posted a new column in the last 12 minutes. (His Twitter feed, however, is a great way to get that weekend fix.) One of the more useless things on ESPN's website is the SportsNation polls -- asking the audience's take on something mundane and fluffy like "Who would you want to be your father: Tiger, LeBron, Phil, or Roger Federer?" No matter how stupid these polls might be, however, I click and vote every single time I visit the page.

Why?

Not because I care about the outcome; it's because I like to play "Race to 100 Votes" between Alaska and Wyoming. Voting in the poll is the only way you can see the results. They roll out a red state/blue state map and you can see the percentages and number of votes per state. Most states have hundreds -- if not thousands -- of votes, but there's always poor Alaska and poor Wyoming -- 49th and 50th in population, respectively -- scuffing along in the double digits. I almost feel bad for their sheer insignificance, but then I just giggle when I see the underdog, Wyoming, has taken a 95-90 lead.

Could we drink to this game?

ONE TEAM. ONE SPIRIT. FOREVER GRAY AND TIRED. 10:56

Every year, the Syracuse University football team has a new slogan or gimmick to get fans FIRED UP about the upcoming season. The Athletic Department always puts up a glitzy billboard and distributes matching posters as far as the eye can see.

This year, the slogan is ONE TEAM. ONE SPIRIT. FOREVER ORANGE. That's fine. Not great, but whatever -- the interest in the team Doug Marrone brings will sell itself. Still, the AD probably wants to portray the team's new face looking intense, focused, and passionate, right?

Uh, yeah, not so much. This is the picture they chose, over all others, to represent the team's energetic new face. Doug doesn't look like he's ready to lead his team to victory. He doesn't look like he's brimming with passion. I'd say it looks more like he just woke up after a hard night of drinking and saw that his cat was hit by a car. Or that someone just told him he stepped in dogshit while he was being arrested for first-degree arson.

He looks gray, shriveled, and tired. He looks, as Jerry Seinfeld once said, "like an old catcher's mitt."

The SU AD has all the free publicity it could ever want with the arrival of a promising youngish coach, yet the one picture they chose looks like it's off the back of a milk carton. Unbelievable.

For the full effect, here's a shot of the whole poster, at a steep angle because I'm an idiot and had to take this quickly before my phone died.

Yikes.

Delicious Posting: Eh. 21:31

Scratch yesterday's post. The automatic Delicious posting doesn't work with well with Blogger and the email thing sucks. If you want to stay on top of my linkdumps, check the sidebar or click on my Delicious link under the internet empire.

Temptation Poker 21:14

I had an idea:

Temptation Poker. All of the players must begin by fasting for 24 hours before the game. No cheating (punishable by death. Or loss of all money).

At the game, everyone comes in with a predetermined amount of money. (This is all a lot like normal poker so far. Except the fasting.) Then, chips are distributed. But the chips are not normal poker chips. Instead of poker chips, you use cookies. Hence, TEMPTATION POKER. Whatever the dollar amount each cookie equals, the players have a difficult choice: money or food? How much will your hunger eat away at you? What are you willing to "pay" to eat your poker chips? Naturally, you don't want to lose all your chips, because you're out big money and big food! Whose willpower is the strongest?

I think this would be a really good Survivor challenge, if Survivor weren't awful. Who's ready to play TEMPTATION POKER with me?

Ironic Bingo: An Introduction 10:20

Life is too short to take too seriously. What do they say? You'll never make it out alive anyway?

Well, I plan to live forever (so far, so good)... but that doesn't mean I think life should be taken too seriously, either. One of my favorite pastimes is creating and participating in little games to make the mundane a bit more tolerable. Today's topic: ironic Bingo.


Radio Bingo
My mom says you'll always have friends if you have a deck of cards. Indeed, I remember many a college orientation or group trip being dominated by card games. But cards are a little too much work: the dealing, the playing, and the shuffling. I'm simpler and easier to please than that -- all I need is a radio. Preferably one with a repetitive and predictable radio station. Sitting and listening? Much more passive than cards.

Radio Bingo was, as far as I know, created by two bored employees of a Subway franchise in Manlius, New York. These poor folk were forced to listen to Syracuse-area adult contemporary juggernaut Y94 FM all day, every day -- a station not known for its variety. (Think, like, Celine Dion nine times an hour.) Instead of intentionally driving a bread knife through their eyes, however, they came up with a way to stave off the abject terror of adult contemporary radio. They each created a 5x5 "Bingo" board -- free space in the middle, natch -- and filled each space with a Y94 artist they were likely to hear. Each time an artist on the board played, his/her/their square was crossed out.

The object of the game, of course, is to get a Bingo. The first players of Radio Bingo never reached their goal. Their cruel, androgynous supervisor snatched their cards away and made them suffer once again. These brave martyrs are not forgotten, however. (Long live Saint Ned and Saint Brian!) The bag boys at the local country club picked up the tradition, filling out Bingo cards each morning and afternoon for their favorite radio stations.

Now that NOVA 105.1 is off the air -- may it rest in peace -- my preferred radio station is TK99, Syracuse's classic rock station. It's not my favorite radio station, because I'm a talk radio guy, but the music has withstood the test of time, and the station is freaking repetitive as all hell. My brother and I heard Led Zeppelin six times during last week's shift. I nailed 20 of my 24 Bingo picks -- and really, some incarnation of Eric Clapton not playing once in eight hours is nothing short of a travesty. Aggregate Bingoes (Bingos?) at the end of the shift crowns the winner, the tiebreaker being total squares covered. The fabled Cover-All has yet to happen, but when it does, you'll be the first to hear. (You'll hear me screaming "BINGO! BIN-GOOOOOOO!!!")


Other Ironic Bingo Games
Bingo has caught on like wildfire in all other walks of life. Danny Macintosh, for instance, works at the State Fair's Gianelli Sausage stand. He created a Bingo board for stereotypical Fair patrons he had as customers. (Danny Mac, help me out, where is the link?)

The past two semesters, I alleviated the boredom and monotony of the first week of class in college by creating "First Week of College Bingo." I uploaded the board to Facebook, tagged my friends, and encouraged them to print out their boards and bring them to class -- I taped mine to the inside of a binder -- and cross off spaces as things happen. It's not as easy as some of the other ironic bingo games, but when your teacher finally gives you a dictionary definition that you've been holding out for all week, it's almost impossible not to stand up and shout in euphoric glee. (But that would interrupt class.) I'll do another board this coming semester and post it here, though I'll be in Spain so I don't know how well it will work en español.

Another good one is Nice-n-Easy Bingo, performed by Danny Mac and Baby Blu at the local convenience store, which is a popular place for the local townies. They put loser kids from high school and frequent customers on the board and, yes, cross them off as they come in.

Do you have an ironic Bingo game? Or suggestions for an improvement?

Subscription to: Delicious/girardiparty 10:50

So, starting tonight (?) I should be getting automatic posts every night that I save a Delicious bookmark! So look out for that -- it should be cool once I iron out the kinks.