lets hope the Globe stays alive.

It's possible The Boston Globe will announce that it's shutting down operations today, which of course would be very sad. However, as soon as I read that, I found this cartoon (click for larger):



from here.

Where the Wild Things Are!

I have to wait until October for this?!

oh. em. jee.

Wow. Everything in that is amazing. Unfortunately, Bango tore his ACL, and didn't mean to go through the hoop at all, which is kind of surprising to me.

Story here.

Griffey!

Griffey Jr. is heading back to Seattle, and that's cause for celebration. Even though living in Boston means I'll get to see about 6 Mariners games this season, it's still gonna be nice to see that sweet swing in blue and white. After the awful season Seattle had (Mariners, Seahawks, Huskies were all terrible. Oh, and the Sonics became the Oklahoma City Thunder), this is good news for the city's sports situation, even if he has lost a step (or ten). Ultimately, people will be very very happy to see him there.

Because I'm Bored and John Tesh is Funny

Zzzzz

I am tired at work today, and I wanted to take a nap during my lunch break. This school sucks as far as any kind of campus space goes. I miss sleeping here:

which is inside here:

Inauguration.

There isn't much to be said about the inauguration of Barack Obama that hasn't already been said, so I will try not to say much. Yes, I am proud of our country, and I am hopeful for the future. More than anything, I love the way Obama turned his inaugural speech - a time when most gathered in the capital to celebrate - into a call for action, sacrifice, and selflessness. Regardless of any one person's religious beliefs or political affiliation, answering that call should make the world a better place. I will try to answer that call myself, somehow.

For full text, audio, and video of Mr. Obama's speech, click here! You can also find pretty much any great American speech here.

Barack and Michelle Obama as King and Queen of the biggest and best prom ever. For some reason I imagine there was punch and Peter Gabriel's "In Your Eyes" involved here.

In my opinion, aside from his final press conference, W. has been rather gracious in his departure from the White House.

Craig Robinson, Michelle's brother and Oregon State University men's basketball coach, represented the Beavers again with a nice orange and black scarf.

You can take da boy out da island, but you can't take da island out da boy.

Boston.com's Big Picture has great, high-resolution pictures from the inauguration. This really says more than any pundit, talking head, or writer could ever say.

*1st photo: Susan Walsh, AP
**2nd photo: Jason Reed, Reuters

Football Championship Weekend!

This is is the first time I'm making picks for the NFL's conference championship games. Why? Because why the frick not? Before I do that though, I'd like to share a fantastic clip from Jeopardy.

Anyways, here goes.
Baltimore Ravens at Pittsburgh Steelers: This one's easy, I'm going with the Ravens. Forget all the talk about the Steelers' defense and the Ravens have no running game and all that garbage. That's all too technical for me. I'm going with the Ravens because they're named after Edgar Allan Poe's poem "The Raven," since he kinda lived there and all that. (A nice subplot to this is that someone from Pittsburgh wants to exhume Poe's body and move him from Baltimore to Pitt, which, in my opinion, is total BS). Not only do they have a raven mascot, they have three ravens mascots, and they're named Edgar, Allan, and Poe! Also, they have a marching band: The Marching Ravens! Now that's cool, because more NFL teams should have marching bands (I guess the Washington Redskins have one too). It's also cool because the band is older than the actual football team! So yeah, I'm picking the Ravens for all the wordnerdy and bandgeeky reasons. Plus Ed Reed will keep the Steelers passes in front of him which means they won't be able to stretch the field, Pitt can run all they want but even if that happens, the Ravens won't give up much in the redzone.

Philadelphia Eagles at Arizona Cardinals: Eagles. For no other reason than Arizona in the Super Bowl = boring. Also, if the Phillies won the World Series and the Eagles can win the Super Bowl, maybe Boston will shutup about the Red Sox, Patriots, and Celtics owning the major sports.

Land of Ports, Land of More

It's winter for sure, and Boston has pretty much looked like this going on about a month now. It's snowy, slushy, icy, and cold as hell. While I admit, it's kind of a pain in the ass having to walk over piles of ice and snow everywhere, I kinda like it. I've always liked winter and cold weather, probably because of moving from Hawaii to Seattle when I was nine and suddenly being able to see my breath in clouds of smoke. Before that, breath-clouds were to me like snow, a romantic impossibility that happened only in movies or cold weather football games (not only did we not have cold weather in Hawaii, but no, we did not have professional football, and no the Pro Bowl doesn't count). Anyway, so I like the cold weather. I like the tingly shivery feeling of holding my coat closed. I like the way my face feels in the cold, and the way it feels when it warms up indoors. I like getting into a warm bed after a cold day. It's all nice. I like Boston because really, it doesn't get this cold in the Pacific Northwest; even though it did snow before and during our trip to Washington and Oregon (the snow in Seattle was nothing compared the amount of snow we got here in Boston). That being said, I've been thinking a lot about Portland. Rachel and I want to move back to Oregon and to Portland whenever we finish school and the other stuff we have going on out here.

That's Moreland Hall up there, home of the English Department at Oregon State University (Go Beavs!), and a picture taken near a covered bridge in Corvallis. Yesterday I wrote about Powell's City of Books over on the Vernacular Blog, and that got me started wanting to go back to The Land of Ports. Then Rachel and I started looking at houses in Portland, and that of course made me want to go back even more. Who cares if buying a house is pretty much impossible right now? That doesn't make me miss Oregon any less. The two years I spent in Corvallis were pretty damn fantastic. Sure, Hawaii is a nice place to visit, Seattle is a beautiful city, and I like Boston a lot, but those two years in Oregon are the only time a place has really made me feel truly and totally at home.

New Year's Resolutions

Every year around this time I get the itch to shave my head. It's a weird sort of physical manifestation of a clean start. I think I'll try to hold off this year, even though my hair always feels uncontrollable no matter what it's doing. It's been a few years since I've made any New Year's Resolutions, mainly because I think they're pretty stupid, but who cares right? Any opportunity to improve yourself seems like a good thing. So, here are my New Year's Resolutions:

- 500 words a day. At least. I don't write nearly as much as I should. I've tried putting time stamps on tasks like this before (30 minutes of writing every day!) and it always fails. 500 words seems less intimidating than 30 minutes, probably because I know what 500 words looks like.

- Be more disciplined. That's pretty broad and vague, and that's the way I like it. It's meant to encompass a lot of things. Don't eat that extra cookie. Procrastinate less. Focus on getting shit done. Be cleaner. Organized. The lack of specificity, I think, will help me stay conscious of it 24/7.

- More creative outlets. I haven't painted in a few years, even though I love the feeling it gives me. I've always felt that I wasn't that talented or creative, which made me stop in the first place. But now I feel like, who cares? Just do it, right. Especially now that Rachel and I have this pretty awesome apartment set up. That creates the opportunity for creative outlets to be put to practical (and not-so practical use). Also, do more photography. I bought that fancy schmancy camera because I wanted a fancy camera to play with. I made a poster for our bedroom, which has been framed and has yet to be hanged. More of that stuff!

- Hang that poster.

- Read more. Sure, I probably read a lot, but never enough. I can think of many hours that could have been spent reading instead of watching TV or sleeping or something. This probably falls into that discipline thing, but my bookshelf tells me to focus specifically on that. To start off, I bought the lotsa books for my novel class and also spent the $50 Powells giftcard on some books that have been sitting on my wishlist far too long.

- Say "Why not?" more often. I'm pretty damned good at finding reasons to not do something. That's something I'd like to change for sure. Instead, I'd like to be able to just jump into action, whatever it is. That sounds pretty awesome to me.

So, we'll see where I am a year from now.