My new bedroom furniture arrived today with a "dark Espresso finish". I moved all the old stuff into the guest room, which also included the bookshelf full of important-looking music theory texts.

New Lost and Alias tonight. Watch.

Name that Tune

It's been a year and a half since the last time I had a Name that Tune contest. Since repetition is the key to Western music and blogging, it's time for another one!

The rules are simple: Correctly guess the song title and artist of each excerpt below and send your responses to my e-mail address (there's an e-mail link at the bottom of this page). The person who gets the most correct will win a $5 gift certificate to Amazon.com which should cover the shipping costs on one item since you are obviously not in a high enough social caste to have an Amazon Prime free trial membership like me. If I get multiple correct entries, the first five to get all of them correct will each get a gift certificate.

On the bright side, these songs are all from well-known, recognizable tunes (unlike my last contest). The downside is that the excerpts are only one second long, so hopefully you've heard the songs a million times before. I'm hoping that everyone out there can at least guess a couple. Deadline for entry is next Wednesday, May 10th at Noon EST. I reserve the right to change any rules to suit my fancy, but the prize is quite real*!

*Disclaimer: I don't know if the gift certificates work at Amazon.ca or Amazon.kangaroo, but I will gladly mail you a fiver if you are a low-class foreigner, which you can then take to the local money changer / medicine man.

Friday Fragments

a blank check for the bored soul

♣ I just heard through the grapevine (where the grapevine is an e-mail from the dad) that Aaron and Lisa Ulm had their firstborn, Allison Elizabeth Ulm, last month. It now feels like there are BABIES EVERYWHERE, and I can't walk down the street without tripping over a misplaced baby. Allie Ulm was born just two days after Eleanor Ahlbin, which should give the latter a slight but noticeable advantage when they all compete on the first season of Infant Survivor.

♣ Even if you have no gladiatorial babies of your own, you should enter yesterday's Caption Contest, because the winner gets $10, which is easily enough to buy a baby in any developing third-world country or North Carolina.

♣ There aren't any babies in my own house (except when I lose at poker), but I do have a new cactus named Pointy in my basement. Pointy the Cactus takes the place of Moldy the Water Lily, which was a housewarming gift from Rod & Nikki in 2004. Moldy felt that my home was a hostile environment since being upstairs meant getting eaten by cats and being in the basement meant BU forgetting to keep it watered. Pointy will not care about water, but I'll have to watch out for little pricks.

♣ I did a security clearance interview for Anna on Tuesday, and the interviewer was covered in little pricks and nicks and scratches. Either he was the victim of a gerbil suicide bomber or he'd gotten into a heck of a barfight the night before.

♣ Anna first requested her clearance back in 2004 and she still doesn't have one yet. One of my bosses at work has been waiting for five years now -- meanwhile the guy in the office who's an Iranian National got his in just a couple years. Someone must have answered yes to the question, "Are you aware of any attempts by ____ to overthrow the U.S. government?"

♣ The interviewer really just wanted to know about Anna's years as a nomad, but unfortunately I couldn't provide any written evidence of bills and leases, since all of that took place more than three years ago (and avid readers of this site will remember that I bought a paper shredder that can also shred CDs and steak knives just a few months ago). It would be really helpful in situations like these if they printed leases on indestructible paper. I've already sent a letter to Johnson & Johnson and they're on the case.

♣ This weekend looks to be a busy one, though thankfully I won't be driving all over damnation like last weekend. On Saturday, I'll be having a Cinco de Mayo related Poker Night with plenty of limes and mayo (no one will be honking in my cinco though). On Sunday, we're going to finish off the hall bathroom for good, since our attempts last week were temporarily delayed by a leaky pipe inside the wall.

♣ Next week is the last full week before Mother's Day so make sure you have one (if you believe in mothers and celebrate this holiday). On Monday, former basement-dweller Eric will be returning to FGM after a year spent at Booz-Allen Hamilton, because apparently working for a company whose acronym sounds like "BAH HUMBUG" is not as fun as working for a company with the same acronym as "Female Genital Mutilation".

♣ Have a great weekend!

Clip Show Day

I can warn you right now that this week will continue to be slim on free time for me, so there might not be much new content to read. Since everyone in the world is now killing off all of their pigs to combat swine flu, I thought it might be apropos to clip-show back to an old update, written when George Bush introduced us to Pandemic Influenza.

Until I have time to write something new, talk amongst yourselves.

Busy Day

Osama Analogy (Osamanalogy) Day

reaping the benefits of Google search trends while the reaping is good

The news that Osama bin Laden was finally killed in a military raid in Pakistan is not unlike the series finale to LOST -- more punchline than epic wrap-up, it lends itself to a brief, satisfied moment of closure before gnawing doubts creep in to highlight the lingering unresolved questions and sense of futility and waste surrounding the entire venture.

In the beginning, a compelling case for action unifies everyone with a fervor to see things through to the end. People are energized and sharing their thoughts around the watercooler constantly. Around Season Three, plot holes start to creep in with annoying regularity, and you get the sense that there really isn't a master plan, almost as if the writers have attended the Robert Jordan school of treading plot water.

Season Four brings incredularity. Why can't anyone find this place? We have satellites pointed all over the world and I can see my house online.

By the time you hit Season Five, everyone's just tired of the whole affair and wants it to be done. However, at this point you realize that you've invested so much in reading forums and purchasing the overpriced DVD sets that it's hard to abandon all of your efforts to date. Plus, the writers have dug themselves so far into a hatch that there's no clean exit from the debacle.

When the end finally comes, late at night after most people have gone to bed, it doesn't solve anything, it doesn't fix anything, and no one has come back to life. You realize that if you had directed all of that time and energy to something more worthwhile, you might be a much better person today. You still can't help but think, "Thank God it's over!" though.

New Car Day

UPDATE: Car secured.

Weekend Wrap-up

A live-action scene from our Deux du Mai (pronounced "doodoo may") barbeque. The dum-dums weren't just inside the pinata.

Memory Day: Snapshots

This picture was taken back in 1980.

The setting is our backyard, and the fact that I was brought out in a stroller suggests that I was still at the age where I was unable to do a single thing on my own, and could just sit there like a lichen or Kuato from Total Recall.

My sister has on a jumper with the positive motto, "Girls Can Do Anything!", while my mom is wearing the Romanian flag, but with pizza toppings as the official seal.

Review Day

There are no major spoilers in these reviews.

Sneaky Pete, Season Two:
I really enjoyed season one of this show, and the first half of the second season was both fun and funny as the characters deal with the fallout of their choices from the last season. However, the back half of the season is something of a muddle, with too many moving parts and unclear character motivations. It essentially just sputters to a conclusion. Free on Amazon Prime.

Final Grade: B-

Better Call Saul, Season Three:
This show has finally found its stride and was engaging and watchable all the way through. Even some of the artistic choices and extended montages that I would have found incredibly dull in Breaking Bad worked well here. Free on Netflix.

Final Grade: A-

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri:
This movie was written and directed like a Coens Brothers movie that I actually had interest in watching. Rebecca remarked that Frances McDormand's character was her spirit animal. The movie ends fairly open-endedly, but leaves enough clues to mull over after the fact that you can decide for yourself how things will play out.

Final Grade: A-

Kevin James: Never Don't Give Up:
This clean comedy special starts out fairly strong but then builds up to an audience interaction bit that kills any momentum and ends on a chuckle. Had the bits been reorganized so the interactions were towards the beginning, it would have been a better end-to-end show. Free on Netflix.

Final Grade: C+

Recipe Day: Worcestershire Steaks

A new steak marinade from the quarantine files:

Ingredients

• 1/8 cup olive oil
• 1/8 cup Balsamic vinegar
• 1/8 cup Worcestershire sauce
• 1/8 cup soy sauce
• 1 teaspoon brown mustard
• 1 teaspoon minced garlic

• ribeye steak, 1" - 1 1/4" thick
• salt and pepper

Directions

1. Create 1 batch of marinade for each steak. Mix marinade ingredients in a bowl.
2. Marinate each steak in a separate freezer bag for 2 hours. Don't marinate for longer -- you want the steaks to be thoroughly coated but not completely infiltrated.
3. Remove from marinade and pat dry. Add salt and pepper on each side. Allow steaks to warm up to room temperature for 30 minutes before grilling.
4. Grill steak on high heat, 2 minutes per side.
5. Reduce grill to medium heat and continue grilling: 5 minutes per side for rare steaks and 8 minutes per side for medium.
6. Let sit for 5 minutes after grilling. Serve with mushrooms or whatever is left in your pantry.

Memory Day: Snapshots

These pictures are the only surviving pictures from our Quatro de Mayo barbeque nine years ago, on May 4, 2013.

My idea of a themed barbeque is to head to Costco the morning of and purchase anything related to that theme, which is why we ended up with a "Beers of Mexico" sampler pack and a pineapple (which we then had to learn how to cut up properly). We also bought a pack of flimsy flat-sided toothpicks that constantly broke off in foods. We eventually just threw them out in favor of upper-crust round toothpicks.

The teeny Smith kids attended and ate nothing but fruit. In the background, you can see the original shed which was finally replaced in June 2015. The fence is two separate shades because the left half was destroyed and rebuilt after the 2012 derecho. The rest of the backyard looks virtually identical today.