Edwin MacPhisto

I once had a dream that a sniper shot Dames in the head while I was hanging out in a mansion with a bunch of my friends. This started a very exciting murder mystery in the vein of TNT new classic The Negotiator.

That's one way to end a love triangle. I kind of hope they stop with the cute taglines for every stretch of episodes. "Save the cheerleader" was appropriate but these last ones have been supremely lame.

Fuckin' 24. They serve up what I think is one of the lamer episodes in recent history in probably the least interesting season so far, and end it on that! I love you, 24.

Late to the Bowie party: 1. Ziggy Stardust 2. Queen Bitch 3. Station to Station 4. Oh! You Pretty Things 5. Moonage Daydream Fuck, that was difficult. I continue to agonize. And I'm fascinated by penultimates, so maybe I'll get to that soon.

Tim is one of my favorite albums ever. I like the other big two a lot too but listen to Tim the most. Their best blend of anthemic stuff, jangly fun stuff, and face-crushingly depressing stuff.

"Animals don't feel pain." Creed was an all-star in this one--just a little more than his usual one moment, but not too much to ruin him. I loved the episode, and would put it up there with "Email Surveillance" as one of their best efforts at hitting all the right notes. Also, Whedon did well directing. He did a good job foregrounding things that often fall a little too far into the background, like the absolute gold of Angela going into stop drop and roll as soon as the bat came out.

If Clemson and FSU keep tanking, Georgia Tech certainly has a shot to sneak in at one of the last spaces. I think they'll need at least 8-8 and a win in the ACC tourney to be considered, though. They're at #42 in the RPI currently, but that'll climb if they get to that record, and they'd have wins in at least 7 of their last 10 games. Basically, Maryland, FSU, Clemson, and GT will probably get one or two bids between them, depending on how they fare. GT controls their own destiny at this point, but it'll be rough for them to even win out at home with UNC and BC coming to town. I certainly don't think GT is close to being in the top third of the conference. They'll need a big run in the conference tourney to convince me of that.

I love The Departed but Children of Men is the absolute best thing I've seen in a long long time. Rarely do I see a movie that hits every note so perfectly. Speaking of the DVD, I watched some of the special features yesterday. The piece on South Boston and Whitey Bulger is way good.

The disco freak-out is totally my favorite part too. Of course, I like the whole beginning chunk as much as Czech seems to as well. I guess that's why it's my favorite song over 10 minutes. I kind of feel like a poser, though, because my favorite song over 10 minutes is only just over 10 minutes. That Boris song is a trip, too. I'm really into that album lately.

With the exception of UNC, the teams at the top of the conference all started inconsistent and have improved greatly over the course of conference play. UVA, VT, and BC all have some absolutely miserable losses early in the season (in addition to the ones you pointed out, UVA choked big-time over the holidays, losing to Utah), but all three have gotten much better as the season progressed. I watch most of the ACC games and all three have gotten much better at their strengths--for VT, it's causing disruption and taking advantage of their speeds to get big points in transition. UVA has become a much stronger rebounding team and started to find 3rd scoring options. BC's personnel losses forced them to shift almost everything through Dudley, which has been a blessing. All that said, I think all three of those teams are 5/6 seed caliber-squads. Whichever one finishes the best will probably end up a 4. What I'm saying is that they're very good teams, but you're right in that they're not elite.

BC's pretty good. They can go as far as Jared Dudley and a decent cast of supporting characters can carry them. They were ranked and are considered good because they've played extremely well in the ACC up to this point, including 4 road wins (even though FSU got jobbed pretty badly at the end this weekend). However, they have the toughest road of anyone left, with UNC, @ VT, Clemson, and @ GT remaining. Fortunately for BC, UNC, VT, and UVA, there's so much separation between the top 4 in the conference and everyone below them that each of those teams would have to collapse tremendously to not get first-round byes in the conference tourney. Duke, meanwhile, looks good to go if they win their remaining two home games.

I'm interested to find out if we get to take showers, have access to sunlight, etc. Important factors all in determining whether I bring Niggaz4life or not.

Meat Loaf - "I'll Do Anything For Love (But I Won't Do That)" - 11:59 Neu! - "Hallogallo" - 10:07 Boris - "When We Is Thrown Away" - 10:14 Underworld - "Juanita/Kiteless/To Dream of Love" - 16:36 And probably my favorite: David Bowie - "Station to Station" - 10:14

Maybe. I think it's totally essential to have that between "4th Time Around" and "Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands," but I guess by definition that could make it filler. Still, I think it works exceptionally in the album's structure, particularly because of the lyric "If I just did not feel so alone," which is a total call-back to the similar line in "Rainy Day Women #12 & 35." That and the fact I think it's a plenty-fun, bluesy romp is enough for me to call it a good song that beats out filler status.

I once sexually exploited a pretty cute girl who took a very similar class from the same professor. Were I vulgar man, I'd joke that I Railed her a ton. But I'm not like that.

Just picked up the fancy-ass steelcase edition at Best Buy. Gorgeous packaging--tin case, with the gun/Boston skyline logo on it. Aesthetically it's one of the best-looking DVDs I've seen. I can't believe I never commented on this movie when it first came out, cause man, was it ever fantastic. I expect that, within 5-10 years, posters for this movie will be taking the place of a fair number of the standard Goodfellas/Godfather posters in college dorm rooms.

The only Austen I was assigned was Northanger Abbey. Twice. I didn't read it the first time, actually. If you avoid 19th century seminars, I don't think you run into her that often these days. Charlotte Bronte gets a little more Eyre-time currently.

You can tell I'm home sick telecommuting today when I'm arguing passionately about ass-rape and its relevance to our modern life at 8:30 in the morning.

Well, I can see that, I just objected to the "victimless crime" writeoff. I'd argue that just having a drunk driver on the road is encroaching on the well-being and safety of other drivers (which I can vouch for; sharing an expressway with a guy with his headlights off swerving between lanes is a pretty obvious sign that you need to get off the expressway), and as Ripper said, it's just a matter of luck as to whether or not you really fuck up. Sure. But it is a victimless crime, simply by definition. If there is no victim--and the mental anguish or anxiety of someone witnessing a drunk driver swerving around is legally not enough to make someone a victim--then it is a victimless crime. I guess large concepts like "society" and "safety" are the victims, and I certainly don't know enough about law to know all the intricacies. Whether or not a drunk driver hits someone is certainly tied to luck (and level of inebriation), but whether or not you commit manslaughter or assault when you fight someone is tied to luck too. (I swear I'm not trying to Superjerk myself off here with a semantics argument--drunk drivers should be punished, but punishment has to be scalable. Carte blanche for getting American History X'd every day isn't appropriate. That said, the focus of this discussion really isn't drunk driving so much as the prison system--it's deficient in that it yields penalties greatly in excess of the judgments handed down to criminals. As Smitty said above, a judge and jury don't say "We sentence you to daily rape and AIDS!" They say "you're losing several of your personal freedoms for 8 years.")

Vast overreaction. There's a tremendous difference between a DUI--a misdemeanor that results in no harm being done to another party--and, say, vehicular manslaughter resulting from a DUI, a felony in which a victim dies. Drunk driving is retarded and people should be punished for it, but there are obvious degrees that you have to take into account as with any crime. I don't know what this guy's particular case is, but that's a dangerous generalization to make. On the main topic, U.S. prisons are overcrowded, poorly managed warzones. I don't know what we do about that.

So I guess all CTU techies are trained to blow shit up savagely, not just Chloe. Decent two episodes, feel like we're getting things back on track. Nice to see Raje Szebridjwhatever. The fact that Assad's return consisted of him sitting in an office was kind of disappointing, though, and I wish we could have avoided the inevitable "gotta take the president out of power..." storyline.

cabbageboy, probably won't have to worry too much. Louisville's thrashing of Pitt is huge for them. Meanwhile, Georgetown is pummeling WVU. The Hoyas are finally starting to play up to their preseason ranking, and that frontcourt is going to be nasty if they keep getting better throughout the postseason. Good chance of playing their way to a top-4 seed line at this point.

What the hell kind of awesome dog is that? He's great.

Doing my best to fit in: 1. Pulp, "Sylvia" 2. The Avalanches, "Ray of Zdarlight" 3. David Bowie, "Up the Hill Backwards" 4. Broken Social Scene, "Lover's Spit" 5. Brian Eno, "Burning Airlines Give You So Much More"

You know what I do love, though? Joe Walsh's "In the City," from The Warriors. Silky smooth. Best Eagles-related thing that ever happened.