Alien Update

Click here for the Denver Post article.

Alien Believer Pushes for ET Affairs Bureau

The state of Colorado is like a modern day Australia—at least in a sense that Australia was once an asylum for potato-noshing criminals and lunatics. It seems that every time a WTF headline drops jaws, it sprung from that schizophrenic square in the middle of the country.

Case in point, a Denver man is currently petitioning for a ballot initiative that would require the formation of an Extraterrestrial Affairs Bureau. Why? Because aliens are real, dog.

In about a month, the man, a Mr. Jeff Peckman, will show footage of a 4-foot-tall alien creeping around a car, peering into the windows, and blinking. Blinking?!

My boyfriend speculates that, in fact, the video is just the last ten minutes of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

Celine Dion: A Death Threat

Emaciated singer Celine Dion must still be scrubbing the lecherous stain of Vegas from her freakishly toned body. The UK's Daily Mirror reported yesterday that Ms. Dion used 6.5 million gallons of water at her Marin County, Florida home in 2007, or enough to fill a 50-gallon bathtub every four minutes.

"Most homes in the area, which has a population of 126,000, use just 10,000 gallons a month to water the grass and clean their cars."

So Celine, I will have to kill you. Water is a commodity and you don't even shave, so how is it possible that you use so much? Don't answer. It doesn't matter because I have already put a hit out on you. For the greater good, for all mankind, and especially for my parents in Colorado where the paucity of water makes me shudder.

When a slick character with a spit-drenched Cuban and tricolored top-siders comes knocking, know that I sent him. Oh, I sent him alright.

What do the College Kids Say? PWNED?

Zachary, a smoked out Colorado University sophomore who introduced me to the term "zanibar"—and also happens to be my little brother—often trumps me in the logic department, despite the fact that he operates in a weed-induced stupor much of the time.

When we were talking on the phone earlier today—me from my increasingly familiar post on my boyfriend's couch, and him from the dormitory kitchen where he took a summer job in hopes of banging the girls who stay there for sports camps—he was watching a clip of Kobe Bryant clearing a swimming pool full of black mambo snakes.

"Dude, have you seen that video of Kobe jumping the Aston Martin yet?" I asked.

"Yeah, but that shit isn't real."

"Wha?"

"Do you really think that Nike would let him do that? Or do you think that the Lakers would let their star player, the best player in the league and the 2008 MVP risk his life for a stunt? His contract doesn't even allow him to ride a motorcycle, much less jump a moving car."

Silence. "Oh man, you are totally right!"

Blast! Outsmarted by an 18-year-old stoner—again.

Girl Equation

Gould Plated Self-Awareness

As I read Emily Gould's article, "Exposed," the lead story on the Times homepage this morning, my breakfast began its esophagus-burning procession back up my throat. It was all so familiar: the extreme exposure, the vitreous attacks and the gut-eviscerating self-doubt (which I can only assume she is feeling).

When I was twenty and a student at the University of Kansas, I wrote a candid blog about myself hosted by Lawrence.com. It was called Powder Room Confessions. Every time I posted I was pummeled by a barrage of hate mail. After four short months, my fragile ego couldn't handle it and I quit. Much like Emily, I later wrote a feature about my experience, and about the nascent blogging industry in general, for the student magazine (not quite the NYT, but still).

After finishing the article and scanning the 400-some comments, my first reaction was pity. Perhaps that isn't so. My first reaction was jealousy, as it often is when I see someone my age published in the New York Times. But after that, pity. And then a creeping feeling of schadenfreude. Watching someone else get chided in much the same manner that I did years ago was shamefully cathartic. So cathartic, in fact, that I think I am going to buy up all the tissues in Brooklyn so she has to wipe her porcelain, tear-drenched cheeks with paper towels.

But the jealousy? Yeah, totally over it.

C/O Democractic Party

The mile-wide tornado that tore through Northern Colorado earlier today was no doubt whipped up by the GOP in an attempt to instill fear before the Democratic National Convention in August. Next up: locusts.

Moldy Peach Dog Biscuits

Music artists lending their voices or songs to television commercials is as old as Madonna, and to be honest I don't even consider it "selling out." Really, was Aerosmith's aural offerings over the past two decades ever so sacred that a partnership with Dodge changed the band's already fledging rocker reputation?

So when I saw the new commercial for Atlantis resorts, set to "Anyone Else But You" by the indie twosome Moldy Peaches—better known as the song that Ellen Page and Michael Cerra cover at the end of the movie Juno—I thought it was problematic for other another reason, and that is cognitive psychology.

Flashback back to PSYCH 101. Cognitive psychology is a school of thought that emphasizes a patient's mental processes—the same paradigm that harbors Pavlovian theory. And much like Pavlov and his salivating canines, this commercial makes me think of bastard children and awkward teen sex, not giggling frivolously in a one-piece under a poolside cabana. But hey, that's just me.

**and Nick, I know this is probably a complete perversion of cognitive psych and Pavlov and those mangy, blessed mutts. I look forward to the inevitable earful.

Tom Selleck Has Nothing To Do With This Post

Upon careful consideration and a lengthy pros and cons list, I have decided to pack up shop and move to Wordpress Tumblr. Blogger is like living in black and white when everything else is in technicolor; like being on MySpace when everyone uses Facebook.

Now I just have to figure out how to pull off the ole' switcheroo. If I happen to come across any speed bumps, detours or overpasses, rest assured you will be the first to know. And in the unlikelihood of a water landing, your cushion can be used as a flotation device. Same goes for Tom Selleck's mustache.

Anatomy of a Viral Video

Earlier today, a clip of an irascible Bill O'Reilly from his pre-Factor days took ahold of the blogotron. While Billo will have you clinging to the pant leg of your own splenetic boss, whose rants will suddenly appear tame compared to O'Reilly's outburst, what is most surprising is the video's proliferation. Pop culture blogs were on it like flies on a dead hooker—and yes, in this analogy O'Reilly is the hooker. Let's follow the breadcrumbs.

I first entered the online media ring at Radaronline.com, which was sent to me as a link via IM. The poor schmucks at Radar magazine (who I would give my boyfriend's left nut to be) apparently don't have the gear (or perhaps the inclination) to edit out the College Humor logo in the lower-third, thus their source was clear. Skip to Gawker, where O'Reilly took the page view cake with 37,000-plus views by 7 p.m., a boon for Gawker night editor Ryan Tate who posted the video at 2:30 a.m. By 4:30, New York Magazine's Daily Intel blog, which sources all its gossip, had picked it up from Gawker and whirled it into a combo piece about curmudgeonly white men, leading with a clip of New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg erupting at the press.

Four mega gossip sites, one mortified television personality. Is this enough for O'Reilly to crawl under a rock and never reappear?

'Bittersweet' Muff Diving

Certain songs you feel ashamed to love. You'll hear a catchy tune in passing, track it down and two days later "For You I Will (Confidence)" by Teddy Geiger is in your Top 25 Most Played. Shameful.

Such was the case when I came across "Bittersweet," a song even gayer than Ellen Page. The thing is I can't stop listening; I want to hear it over and over again until my ears are bleeding from Sapphic sentimentality and I just want to spoon.

Memoratorium

Me: What's that game called again? The one that you played as a kid with the farm animals and the cards, and you match them up?

Bruce: Um, Memory.

****

Earlier this week, I had that exact exchange. My ability to retain information is startling low. Like, chronic amnesia low. And as my pot intake has decreased over the past few months, it has become increasingly clear that the blaze wasn't solely to blame for the haze. In my case, it just might be a question of intelligence.

But there is hope. A recent study published on Monday in the The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (a title I would never be able to remember) describes the correlation between memory games and the increase of "fluid intelligence.

Will farm animals cards be able to undo that semester in college that I ate extacy as if it were Flinstone vitamins? Probably not. But would I be the lovably spacey, serotonin-deficient depressive had I not gone on weekend-long pill binges, thereby altering my entire identity? Definitely not.