Realm of the Wombat

Andy heard the theme song to Perfect Strangers on TV the other day and vowed to find it on the internets. True to form, he did. But I wondered who actually sang that song? Was it written for the show or adapted from a longer song (like the theme to Cheers)?

Not surprisingly, “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Me Now” was written by Jesse Frederick and Bennett Salvay specifically for the show. It was performed by Pomeranz, and apparently was enough of a highlight that it made his biography. There were two versions of the songs used of varying length. The full lyrics can be found at the bottom of the Classic TV Database entry.

Albany has the most extreme garbage men in all the land!

These signs are posted all over campus, usually near some vegetation. Does that mean that mailing these plants is punishable by death? Is it a warning that anthrax may be in your mail? Is there some poison on these plants that I can learn about by mail? Personally, I think it’s an advertisement for the White Stripes song “Death Letter.”

Update:
Apparently Stache, PBR, and Guy were all holding out on me, because they discovered the meaning of this sign but chose not to tell me. It turns out that a Berkeley hippie was conducting a bit of a sociological experiment. He set up a table on campus and provided envelopes with skulls to willing participants. The volunteer would write down the name of the desired recipient of the envelope with a minimal amount of information and leave it somewhere outside on campus. The hippie believed that the envelope would eventually find its intented target by the generous efforts of the public. For example, Stache wrote a note to me, put it in one of these envelopes and labeled it “Jere Dandy, College of Chemistry, Latimer Hall,” and left it somewhere on campus. If the theory proved true, someone would have picked it up, brought it to the chemistry department, and they would have figured out who it belonged to and delivered it.

Stache thought he could cleverly reveal the meaning of the sign by including that information in the very note which was part of the experiment. However, apparently it failed in this case, so he broke down and told me the story yesterday.

So that’s the story of the “death letters,” but I don’t really understand why this guy needed these crazy signs or how he would even get the results of his study. Just file that under “Only in Berkeley.”

The 610 Latimer crew has a regular trip to Sumo Burger each week. We are generally quite happy with their set-up over there, although we’ve had some complaints. Stache received a chicken cheesesteak once instead of a regular cheesesteak, and another time they forgot PBR’s order altogether. The plasma screen television is gone, the quality of music fluctuates wildly, and the shakes invariably are ready well after the food. However, we continue to patronize Sumo because they make a great burger at a reasonable price and have a frequent customer plan. It certainly should have been mentioned in the Daily Cal’s review of the local burger establishments.

Recently though, Sumo has been deemed guilty of a serious crime. I first noticed the problem two weeks ago. The fries seemed to taste a bit funny. I inquired with my compatriots, and they noticed no problem. I tried a fry without ketchup, and it tasted fine. Upon restoration of the condiment, I realized it was not the french fry that was substandard; it was the ketchup! The bottle said Heinz, but I was skeptical. The next time we dined at Sumo, I picked up some Heinz packets on the way to the restaurant, and we did something of a taste test. The group unanimously decided that the ketchup in the bottle was certainly not Heinz. In our most recent trip, we noticed that behind the counter was a large can of Cheng’s ketchup with a pump attached for refilling the Heinz labelled bottles.

If I recall correctly from a conversation with two unabashed Heinz supporters, this activity is illegal. Unfortunately, I haven’t found anything on the internet to corroborate their opinion, in the U.S. at least. There is a report from London of a cafe getting busted for refilling Heinz bottles with cheaper alternatives. I’ve contacted legal representation and will post my findings in due course.

UPDATE:
Odie and JBarbs have confirmed that this practice is indeed illegal. They are preparing documentation that we will present to the management of Sumo Burger the next time we enter the establishment.

The talk all week was how quickly ND would surpass the paltry 11 yd rushing we posted last year against BYU. Everyone expected it would happen in the first quarter, probably on the first drive. Many even speculated that the first rushing attempt of the day would do the trick. Certainly nobody expected ND to have -1 yd on the ground in the first quarter, and -6 yd at the end of the first half. Of course, in the meantime Quinn and co. were shredding the BYU secondary to set all sorts of records.

The Good:

The Bad:

The Ugly:

The team and crowd did seem to come out flat this week, and after getting a nice lead at 28-10, ND let BYU get back within 5. However, as good teams do, we put the petal to the metal again against an inferior team and won going away. One of the best things about this team is that they do not play down to the competition. In the O’Davieham years, every game was a nailbiter. This team just takes care of business.

At dinner the other night, the 610 Latimer crew agreed that that everyone recognizes George Hamilton, but all anyone knows about him is that he’s always tan. He must have been in some movies or on TV or something, right?

According to imdb, Hamilton starred in many movies in the 60’s and 70’s, and appeared in the Roots mini-series and Dynasty on TV. More recently, he’s parlayed his trademark tan into spots in several commercials, so people that weren’t around for his silver screen days still know who Hamilton is.

I hadn’t been this excited about a football game that I wasn’t attending since the ‘93 Florida State game. My feelings before the game were that we had a chance to win if we didn’t turn the ball over and contained Bush somewhat. We did neither of these things and still had a chance to win it.

The Good:

The Bad:

The Ugly:

There are no moral victories, but a fan has to be happy with how our team played. There’s a reason USC has won 28 (and counting) in a row, and to take them within one play (take your pick of three) tells us something about how far we’ve come. To paraphrase the message saved on our answering machine for the past 10 months, the chickens are home, and boy are they roosting.

In other news, there’s a reason his name is Ayoob and not Booya.

The authors define “freakonomics” as the application of economic principles to non-financial questions. I started reading it on a flight from SFO to O’Hare and finished it as the plane was landing, so it’s certainly interesting and well written. Similarly to Blink, the only thing more intriguing than the topics are the conclusions. The theme is to be skeptical of conventional wisdom; it’s Moneyball for everything outside of baseball.

The Levitt/Dubner team now also has a blog of the same name to continue the discussion of these (often random) questions scientifically.

Saying “Yes!” to everything seems like it should be a really bad idea. Just think of the amount of advertising we’re subjected to on a daily basis. But despite a fair amount of close calls (almost getting beat up in a bar, doing drugs with a stranger in Amsterdam, almost being consumed by a Malaysian lizard) and mounting credit card debt, saying “Yes!” turned this Brit’s life around. What struck me was how he referred to his way of life, e.g. “Yes wanted me to do this,” as if Yes were a higher power. This book has probably been written with the word “Yes” replaced by “God.” What started as a way for Wallace to force himself to hang out with friends more often thus turned into something of a spiritual journey, as he relinquished control of his life.

Add this one to my list of books for a hypothetical high school English class.

Apparently the Yes Man story inspired a bit of a cult, which Wallace has dubbed “Join Me.” It’s quite popular in Belgium, but he’s still working on the Norwegians.

If I have dreams, I don’t usually remember them. However, there have been a couple lately that stuck around in my memory. First, I was skateboarding all over campus. I thought I was doing fairly well (I didn’t hit anyone at least), but Odie told me I was the worst skater he had ever seen. The other dream I remember is that I was going to eat a donut, but then decided to split it with someone, so I cut in half with a knife.

What’s weird about these dreams is that I haven’t skated since I was five and I don’t like donuts. What does that mean?

Ever wonder who else is reading this site? Yeah, I thought it was just my 6 friends too (now including Melissa!), but from StatCounter, I’ve learned that people from all over the world are stumbling upon the site. The number of countries surfing in is really amazing, so I’m going to update the list as new countries make diplomatic contact.

Added 10/6/05:
Croatia
Turkey

Added 9/20/05:

Bahrain
Peru

See the entire list…

Here’s the true story of why you’re prescribed a certain medication when you go to the doctor. It’s not what you think. This was an interesting follow-up What Should I Do With My Life? Shouldn’t someone working less than 30 hours a week and making six-figures would be happy? Actually, I’d be miserable at that job too. The only success I ever had selling anything was M&Ms in 6th grade for our trip to Camp Bernie. I stood outside Grand Union every day for a week and asked everyone who passed, “Do you want to buy a box of M&Ms?” I remember one guy tried to give me some tip about saying I was from St. Thomas More School and we were doing a fundraiser for our retreat and all. Wow, that didn’t work at all.