This Week in Nelson, volume 3, number 7

All right, my laptop battery is dying, so let’s not delay. We’ve got implied vagina aversion therapy, a whole lot of lizard shit, and a questionable allotment of ad revenue. Let’s go.

Birthday shout-out to Gus! A birthday heads-up, Gaus turns 30 not this weekend but the next. If you like Gaus and/or aging and/or drinking and you are unfamiliar with his birthday plans, drop me a line and I’ll drop the science on you. Gus and Gaus!

Books read this week:
-Still reading The View from the Seventh Layer by, Kevin Brockmeier

I got shockingly little reading done this week. I have my reasons. Don’t worry about it.

Random out-of-context quotes of the week:
--“It scared me so bad that I stopped thinking about vaginas!”
--“Okay, so far our ideal party consists of: beer, fights to the death, cupcakes, blood pudding, blood, touch football, mating, charades, and yes, horse hunting.”
--“From here, the stars are a handful of white gravel on that asphalt in Illinois, a shock seeding of determined white rain on the windshield of a planet that’s late for its own wedding.”
--“115 across) Longtime beer brand” (The answer, of course, was “Pabst Blue Ribbon.” Huzzah!)

The O’Reilly Factor for Kids book quote(s) of the week:
-CURRENTLY UNDER RECONSTRUCTION. PLEASE EXCUSE OUR MESS!

Interesting news articles of the week:
-“It was a good week for either R. Sathis Raj or Sabarish Raj, Malaysian identical twins who were freed by a judge in a death-penalty case because police were unable to say which of the brothers had been caught trafficking drugs. ‘I can’t be sending the wrong person to the gallows,’ said Judge Zaharah Ibrahim.” (Man, I need me an identical twin.)
-“A 13-year-old Russian girl wrote to President Dmitri Medvedev to ask for a pet guinea pig and was forced by officials to apologize for wasting the president’s time. After newspapers reported the incident, Medvedev sent over two guinea pigs.” (Putin would have totally had her killed.)
-“Daniel Bennett, a British doctoral student, was heartbroken when janitors at Leeds University threw away a 77-pound bag of lizard dung he’d collected over seven years. ‘To some people it might have been just a bag of lizard shit,’ Bennett said, ‘but its loss altered the course of my life forever.” (Okay, so, I can see how janitors would have been like, “lizard shit? Let’s toss it,” but I can also see how they should have been “77-pounds of lizard shit? Is there a dinosaur in the lab? Maybe someone’s saving this for something.” And why did he need so much lizard shit that he’d been saving it for seven years? When was he going to have enough? What was it for, especially considering that freshness apparently wasn’t important? So many questions!)

Something(s) I’m tired of/ mad at:
-My laziness. I’m doing a poor job of wrapping up my thesis. I’m working, but not at the pace I should be. If you see me around town, and I’m not working on my thesis, feel free to give me shit. Perhaps your shame will aid as a motivating tool. Perhaps not. I just need to get things squared away so I can get the wheels in motion for my exam, which the graduate secretary alerted me is something that should be scheduled in the near future. Damn you time for continuing to move forward!
-The fact that I heard today the state of Kansas is canceling tax refunds this year and the fact that I’m not sure if my return was processed before the deadline. It’s only $70, but if I’d known when I was doing it I wasn’t going to get any money, I’d have spent less time on it. And I did my taxes as soon as I’d received all the forms I needed (a Saturday) and mailed it out as soon as I could after that (the following Monday), so cut a brother some slack.

Something(s) I’m delighted by:
-Eating pretty much normally again, without worry. Well, I’m still trying to eat more healthy than I did pre-gall bladder catastrophe, but it’s nice to be able to make a conscious decision about whether something is healthy or unhealthy, not whether it will cause hours of debilitating pain. My mom even made me a chocolate pie, which, her chocolate pie is one of my all-time favorite things and I was pretty much unable to have any when she made it around the holidays. So good. And to eat Pizza Shuttle again is fucking awesome. And Five Guys. And wings. And Averill Follies at Perkins. Food is fucking awesome, no getting around it. I have witnessed the downside of overdoing it a couple times, though, which isn’t a big deal, but a little shitty. I won’t get into it here, save to say that “shitty” is a proper adjective. I’m gonna get me some K fry for dinner here soon. Huzzah for food!
-Chuck! What with my dissatisfaction with Heroes, Chuck has totally become the show I enjoy most on Monday nights. It’s a fucking romp. Check it out if you haven’t, it comes recommended.

Something(s) I found really kind of odd:
-That Sprite commercial where dudes keep jumping into each other and turning into a shower of Sprite. I’ve already discussed this with a few of you, so I won’t examine it to death, but what the fuck? It bugs me for several reasons: why do people want to be showered in Sprite? Why do people want to die to become Sprite? Why does Sprite want to insinuate that their product is made of people? But I find it more odd than maddening because: who are the ad wizards who came up with this one? Who are their bosses who thought it was good and okayed it to be produced? Who are the focus groups that responded favorably to it? Who are the executives who were impressed with it and shelled out money to put it on the air? Who are these people?

This Week in Answers to Your This Week in Questions This Week!
-I got nothing. The questions are a two-way street. Those of you who aren’t Neuty and Gaus need to step your game up.

I started marathon watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer from beginning to end again recently, as I do from time to time. Goddamn I love me that show. While I would still testify to Congress that The Wire is probably still the best show ever made, Buffy is a close second, and is probably still number one in my heart. That’s just science. And it makes me angry when I look at how they handled cliffhangers, plot twists, character arcs, surprise deaths of characters, personal relationships, and balancing both real and supernatural themes as well as drama and comedy, and I realize that no show I’ve seen since has done as good a job with all that. Some have come close (The Wire, Lost, Battlestar Galactica), but I still have to give Buffy the title there. The people who do Heroes seriously need to sit down and watch some Buffy.

On a side note to Dave, have you tried to develop that film from when we met James Marsters, yet? I’m still real interested to see if those pictures come out.

All right, the battery is really going, so I’m signing off. See you next week.

–> N.