#265 - second monday

whew, second monday at wimbledon today. i haven't posted anything about wimbledon yet... but that's because the business really gets started in the second week. sure, there are upsets in the first three rounds, but in my opinion, you don't deserved to be talked about (in length) until you make it to the quarterfinals. i think that's pretty true of just about any sport with a tournament bracket right? you only really get validated until you make it to at least the quarterfinals.

anyway, every year second monday is the best day of tennis of the year. first of all, it's wimbledon... can you say "prestige?" secondly, wimbledon is the only grand slam that does not play on the middle sunday (c'mon, "wimbledon" and "tradition" are almost synonymous, don't you think?), so after watching a whole week of 10 hours per day of tennis, all of a sudden we get nothing but highlights on sunday, and then BOOM! second monday comes and ALL the remaining men and women are in action on one day playing their fourth round matches (also the only time that happens in a grand slam). and thirdly, at the end of second monday we've got ALL the quarterfinals (men AND women) lined up. sweet.

and so now we can finally get down to some wimbledon business, here are the contenders:
the conversation starts and ends with roger federer. c'mon, anyone else not yet convinced that he is the greatest tennis player of all time need just wait about six more days 'til the wimbledon final on sunday. nevermind his records, his style of play is not only masterful, but beautiful as well. i don't think there's any other player in the history of the sport to play the game so well in all phases, including aesthetics.

forget andy murray, roddick is my pick to reach the final on the other side of the draw (opposite roger, of course). he's the second best grass court player of the decade and he's playing like it again. i like his chances to disappoint all of england and take out andy murray in the semis (even with his improvements in maturity this year, i still can't stand to watch his matches... i don't like his style of play and i love it when someone takes it to him and takes him out... like my man stanislas wawrinka almost did today).

whoa, remember this guy? lleyton hewitt? he won here in what, 2001? 2002? i don't even remember, but he's back with an upset win over no. 5 juan martin del potro and playing great. it's a revival of the old guys at this year's wimbledon...

the renissance continues at wimbledon 2009, remember juan carlos ferrero? whoa! he's a wildcard here but i always thought that the grass was great for his game. he was never quite the same after he reached no. 1 in the world following his french open championship and runner-up finish to andy roddick in the us open, the next year he was injury-ridden and never got back up to the level of play he showed in getting to no. 1. but hey, lleyton, juan carlos, even tommy haas (too bad he's got to play djokovic, my third favorite), they're all into the quarterfinals, go old guys.

just like the men's tournament, the women's side starts and ends with one name: williams. but will it be serena or venus this year? serena's no. 2 in the world, venus comes in at no. 3 but has 5 wimbledon titles (including last year's title when she beat serena in the final) to serena's 2. that being said, serena is in great form going into the quarterfinals, but how can you deny venus going for her sixth title (and third consecutive). i think venus is still the one to beat... but if anyone can do it, it's serena.
as happy as i am that BOTH williams sisters are playing great at the same tournament at the same time, i wish there was more competition for them out there. i mean, of course you've got world no. 1 dinara safina (the younger sister of marat safin) who's my third favorite pick to win here, but sharapova just came back from injury and lost in the second round and poor ana ivanovic had to retire after losing the first set today to venus with a thigh injury.
still, a trio of youngsters to be highlighted... victoria azarenka (power hitter up against serena in the quarterfinals... who i'm not quite sold-on yet as a future no. 1 as the commentators suggest), melanie oudin (american teenager who had to win three rounds of qualifying to even get into the main draw, and then once she did, won three more rounds to get into the round of 16, although she lost today, finally some young americans doing well), and my pick of the newbies:

young german with a steffi graf-like game, big serve, big forehand (kinda like ana ivanovic of a year ago), she faces dinara safina next.

whew, so after a full day of tennis (and, since it's summertime, also a day that i get to go to the gym when it's not crowded, grab lunch, and still have time to drive down to the beach for an afternoon snorkel) tomorrow it's on to ladies' tuesday. all four women's quarterfinals played tomorrow, so it'll be:

#1 dinara safina vs. sabine lisicki - i pick dinara, but lisicki's got a dangerous game if she can stick to the gameplay and execute
#3 venus williams vs. #11 agnieska radwanska - venus will DEMOLISH radwanska's serve.. easy win
francesca schiavonne vs. #4 elena dementieva - i like dementieva, and this is a great chance for her to get to the semis, good for her
#8 victoria azarenka vs. #2 serena williams - match of the day, this'll be a good one, but serena's got too much fire (mostly in the eyes) for azarenka, straight set win for serena

well, those are the predictions... but there's a reason we play the game, go tennis!

#264 - death of english... by snoo snoo

haha, this clip is just for fun

Futurama	Weeknights, 9p/8c
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i love studying languages (articulatory phonetics, especially). i totally would have become a linguist if i thought that there was any possible way to make any kind of money at all with a degree in linguistics (besides becoming a computer speech-recognition programmer i mean, which, y'know, no thank you). so with that option out at least i got into the second best field, speech pathology, where i can dip into linguistics, make a living, and flirt with the medical field a little bit as well (if i was a more motivated man i'd have gone for the big degrees in health sciences, neuroscience is the bomb dude, but i'd had enough of school already). so in my wannabe-a-linguist-ness i zoom in on any and everything language-related i come across in everyday life, lately there's been lots of stirrings in the media about the death of the english language.

i know what you're saying... silly matt, languages don't die (although they do disappear sometimes). and they're not static, they're fluid, in motion constantly... like zombies, but quicker, like running zombies... but bigger and farther-reaching, like double-zombies with ape-arms. man, zombies are scary.

anyway, back to the point, so all these research and newspaper articles i've been reading lately about the "death of english" by text-messaging and twitter are complete hoo-ha (i was gonna write "bologna," but something made me want to spell it "baloney," which would more accurately convey my thought, but would look weird, so i wrote "hoo-ha" instead, which is funny because that's not a "word" i would ever use when talking... huh, so what do you think about that?). all these up-pity journalists think they've got a breaking story by supposing that text messaging will doom the english language? bitch please (haha, again something i would never say in real life, but in fitting with this post, and my mood right now at 11:18 pm on a sunday night at the computer). they think that just because people have found a less effort-ful mode of communication through technology that we're all just going to abandon all other forms of language? geez, over-speculate much?

on snl weekend update seth meyers said: Astronaut Mike Massimo, who is aboard the Space Shuttle Atlantis, became the first person to Twitter from space when he sent the message, "Launch was awesome!" So in forty years we went from "one giant leap for mankind," to "launch was awesome!" I assume if we ever encounter intelligent life from the cosmos, this is how we'll be notified:

obviously although people use text-shortcuts on their phones, they're not going to use it in print (although i did hear one of my friends say that they had to grade a student's term paper with a whole bunch of "wtf" and those kinds of things in it... well, that's just a dumb kid, don't blame texting for stupidity). but my point is that even if people do start switching to use things like "ttyl" in everyday speech, then that's just the english language evolving. hey, as long as you're a native speaker of english, anything you say is correct, you can't ever be wrong.

that being said, there are of course more commonly accepted norms and those that make the native speakers squirm (the cool thing is that it's completely innate, as a native speaker you know when something doesn't sound right, even if you can't describe why... like you know that "brage" could possibly be an english word but "fgral" can't). and so, although the linguist in me accepts the following as "things that i really shouldn't get on people's cases for," the slp in me wants to slap them whenever someone says:

1. "students-es" like they're trying to say "the students' books" but they add an extra (and retarded sounding) syllable
2. when they try to explain something they use the phrase "what that is is..."
3. anything said by a local police officer on the news... seriously, i understand you guys want to sound menacing on the job or whatever, but flip the switch when the red light on the camera turns on, geez

seriously, i don't mind the pidgin and the slang, but know when to use it. it's called code-switching, know when to use your formal language and when the informal is okay (like in the blog, haha). i'm not saying that everyone needs to speak the same way, that would be totally boring (just ask joss whedon), but let the english language evolve as it will... for all those grammar purists out there, man, what if we were still all speaking "middle english" like chaucer? that would suck right? how inefficient. i could totally go on forever about the evolution of languages and endangered languages (like eyak... only one old alaskan guy as the native speaker of that language left in the world), but i'll stop there and leave you with a little bit of lingual goodness and a lot of totally embarrassing crap.

in high school we had to memorize the beginning of chaucer's canterbury tales and at the time i thought it was pretty stupid as a literary exercise, but it became a much more useful piece of memorized knowledge when i started studying linguistics, not for the literature, but for the middle-english-ness of it. click on the video and then read below... ignore the retarded non-IPA transcription on the video and the modern english translation's attempt at making the passage rhyme... tsk tsk

Prologue from The Canterbury Tales by Geoffery Chaucer:

Original in Middle English:
Whan that Aprill with his shoures sote
the droghte of Marche hath perced to the rote,
And bathed every veyne in swich licour,
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
Whan Zephirus eek with his swete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the Ram his halfe course yronne,
And smale fowles maken melodye,
That slepen al the night with open yë—
So priketh hem Nature in hir corages—
Than longen folk to goon on pilgrimages,
And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes,
To ferne halwes, couthe in sondry londes;
And specially, from every shires ende
Of Engelond to Caunterbury they wende,
The holye blissful martir for to seke,
That hem hath holpen, whan that they were seke.

Translation into Modern English:
When in April the sweet showers fall
And pierce the drought of March to the root, and all
The veins are bathed in liqueur of such power
As brings about the engendering of the flower,
When also Zephyrus with his sweet breath
Exhales an air in every grove and heath
Upon the tender shoots, and the young sun
His half course in the sign of the Ram has run
And the small fowl are making melody
That sleep away the night with open eye,
(So nature pricks them and their heart engages)
Then folk long to go on pilgrimages,
And palmers long to seek the stranger strands
Of far off saints, hallowed in sundry lands,
And specially from every shires’ end
Of England, down to Canterbury they wend
The holy blissful martyr,* quick
To give his help to them when they were sick

and so while i was online searching for that, i found this little gem.


wait, wait... it gets worse... this guy totally thinks he's the shit. how embarrassing.


it doesn't stop either... each video i click on links to like 5 more just like it.


i'm in physical pain now... my heart is crying.

#263 - you forgot your flash drive

how much am i loving reruns of "the big bang theory?" THIS much. what's not to love? it's got nerds, science, socially awkward situations, and multiple (and well-varied) pop-culture-like references to all things geeky (from secret agent laser obstacle chess, to atmosphere-eating nano-robots, to skynet, and beyond!). it's so nerdy and i relate completely. okay, maybe i don't get exactly ALL of the jokes (meaning, absolutely none of the star trek ones... besides rock, paper, scissors, lizard, spock... which is an awesome and infinately more logical version of jan ken po), but dude i'm laughing the whole time.

it's because of sheldon... more accurately, it's because i have a lot in common with sheldon. okay, not to such extremes, of course, but throughout the course of a normal day i make a lot of sheldon-like comments in my head, i just don't say them out loud (like he does, haha). seriously though, i completely follow his logic on the show, totally understandable right? so geeky, totally like some of my aspergers kids, see?

plus they do things like fun with non-newtonian fluids... just like mythbusters.

in a perfect world i would be able to express all of my sheldon-like thoughts and everyone would completely understand because i am smart and awesome and completely right all the time. everything would be so much simpler... sigh. oh well, anyway, it's a funny show, it's like work, except i can laugh at all the socially retarded things they do because it's a tv show (well, except that i still laugh at them at work... but perhaps i shouldn't do that, haha).

go nerds!

#262 - tv giveth...

example 1:
jack-in-the-box giveth...


and jack-in-the-box taketh away...

seriously, how one company can go from the heights of midget campfire to horrific lame-o sing-a-long is beyond me. i've been singing "up in the saddle, herding cows the size of schauzers but they're cattle..." for months now and now i have to endure those dorky normal-sized people motion-dancing (especially that damn annoying haole girl with her annyoing face of annoyingness).

summertime tv can be very good, but also very very awful and make-me-vomit-y. in the absence of real television shows (no more the office, dollhouse, terminator, etc.), there are some gems such as so you think you can dance, reno 911, and lots of great stuff on the discovery channel. of course, wimbledon started today so there goes 8 hours of my day (it's on from 1am to 9am in the morning, which gives me a good reason to routinely wake up at least before 10am so i can watch and get on with the rest of my day), but the rest of the day (y'know, whatever other time that is not spent at the beach) is free for both the good and the bad... here are some examples...

example 2: i survived a japanese game show
man, when this show came on last year with it's embarrassingly ridiculous host (and even dorkier audience members) and "hey, i wanna try that" games it was fantastic. but that was when the american contestants had no idea what they were in for... this new season that started last week seems like crap to me. last year they just shipped those americans off the plane straight into the studio with no idea what they were even doing in japan, but this year the contestants have all watched the show and they even know who all the people are (like judge bob and mama-san). i mean, they've still got the ridiculous games and retarded japanese people, but i don't think this was a repeatable show... oh well, i'll still watch it.

example 3: ninja warrior
this one is all "give" man, in addition to another running of ninja warrior in japan, we also get to see hottie olivia munn (who is actually part japanese and lived in japan before getting her spot on G4TV) run the course too...

Video Games - E3 2009 - Ninja Warrior

haha, and THAT is summertime tv. oops, that was last year's clip.. she went one obstacle further this year, and then fell in the muddy water, heh. anyway, if you've never seen this show, here's a clip of only the 2nd man to ever finish all 4 stages, he makes it look REE-diculously easy, but during most tournaments less than 10 people (out of 100... only 5 people made it past the first stage this year) even make it to the second stage and most times NO ONE at all makes it to the final stage, now that's true japanese style (like how the iron chefs always win on the japanese show but the challengers seem to always win on iron chef america).


one thing about watching a current show from japan... japanese people are ugly man. and so nerdy... even the normal looking ones (and there aren't many of those) are so nerdy! for example... the guy who made it the second farthest this year, he was two obstacles from the end of the third stage and he grabbed a metal support beam (which was technically "out of bounds") and was disqualified... then in his interview afterward he was crying! darn japanese, how can you call yourself "ninja warrior" and then cry when you lose? wuss. sigh, my poor ancestry.

by the way, ninja warrior started in 1997, but i was the ORIGINAL ninja warrior doing the "spider walk" up and down my hallway when i was like 7 or something... i got in trouble for putting footprints on the walls.

#261 - summer week 1 = success

and so i declare the first full week of summer a complete success! why? let's list the reasons:

1. spent 5 out of 7 days of it at the beach
2. still had lots of time to get in a workout (during the non-crowded times of day too)
3. went back to yoga for the first time in two months
4. lost track of what day it was
5. didn't have to wake up early once!

hands down the best thing about summer is the time. time to do everything i've been putting off during the year. sometimes this relates to big projects (like finally finishing my cousin's slideshow dvd for her grad party this week), but most of it relates to those little projects that, once started, gets bigger and bigger and consumes much more time than you thought it would (like cleaning the car). but because there's no work and all the time in the world to do both the things that you want to do and the things you need to do, summertime is great. so let's recap quickly:

saturday - this i consider the official start of my summer because even though i was out of work since the wednesday before, that week was tainted with working on monday and tuesday, so summer actually started on saturday for me... and through the magic of summertime i forgot what i did on saturday! woo hoo! and i didn't write it down on my calendar (mental star points for me for not subjecting my entire life to what's scheduled on my calendar... shows personal growth right? yay me.)! i think i went to the beach...

sunday - woke up late, cleaned the floors, did some laundry, then went to tennis, another great day.

monday - surprisingly, i woke up early. early enough to go to the gym (man is it NOT crowded during the day), buy some sushi and even after that had time to hike it down to waimea bay and snorkel a bit (and snap some pictures, cool huh?)
tuesday - worked on the slideshow in the morning (i like doing slideshows, i don't really have a reason to do it often, but when i do it's a nice little creative outlet), then went surfing at chun's (flat, but super nice weather)

wednesday - another mid-day workout at the gym and, what the heck, went surfing again! y'know, for some reason by the time 2:00 pm rolls around i think it's already too late to go to the beach, but man, it's still light out at 7 pm, so i gotta not worry about the time so much (thinking about traffic or crowds) and just do what i want to do!

thursday - cleaned the car all morning... i didn't think it'd take so long, but after washing and waxing i decided to vaccuum all the dog hair outta the seats from when i took the a-dawg to the beach. man, that took forever. of course i had a whole shore-load worth of sand in there and some other gunk too, but now it's spiffy clean from top to bottom, even armor-all-ed the dash and junk. then i went surfing again! woo hoo! now by the time i got to ali'i it was like 3 pm and i thought it'd already start to either be windy and cold, or super crowded. the surf report said flat to 1' but i knew that a small swell was coming on friday so i chanced it anyway. man, what a good decision! it was only me and one kid out there and the sets were sweet! super clean, long rides, plus since i was like the only one out there i could catch each set and ride it as long as i wanted. then, after about an hour of small stuff that swell started to roll in... much bigger than the surf report said. i mean, it could have been just because there was no one else out there, but i was getting the rides of my life man, i mean almost barrels and stuff. it was sweet. and even when i left there was still no one out there. man, i couldn't wait to get back out there again the next day.friday - well, when i took a look at the surf report when i woke up the swell came in... but it came in too big. tons of people out there and overhead, which is not a good combination for me, i'm not that good a surfer. but luckily for me it was pretty rainy today, so i don't feel bad about not scrapping up the courage to chance the waves. instead i had a nice safe day, another mid-day workout, sushi for lunch, and a haircut to end the day. on the mental schedule for tomorrow... beach, maybe some tennis (hopefully) and then a grad party at night. let's keep this summer going!

#260 - dogs at the beach

what up? dogs at the beach baby. better than snakes on a plane (sorry, it was just on tv... and it's summertime... i don't have to explain myself...). anyway, it's finally summertime and i can do ridiculous things like trying to take the a-dawg to the beach. and ridiculous it was. granted, she did way better on her very first beach encounter than i thought (the very first thing she did, after dragging me across the sand, was hop right into the water and swim around, finally some of that innate laborador nature coming out), but the car ride out there was nuts.first of all, i had prepared the backseat all covered and ready for her to chill, but on the drive she hopped herself right up to the front seat like she was meant to be there and bothered me the whole way down (luckily she's not very stable so she kept falling down on the turns, haha). plus now my car smells like dog AND wet dog and i've got white hairs flying up everywhere when i roll down the windows... reminds me of my old car, with the (heavily protested, by me) sheepskin seat covers.but once she got to the beach, at least, she was pretty mellow. she likes to sit in shrub-ery so she found a nice spot in the half-flower bushes. went for a swim a couple of times, she's pretty good at it, she didn't like the waves so much but when it was pretty flat she was ready to jet on out to open ocean, i had to call her back a couple of times. i mean, i'm sure she'd be okay, but it was really rocky and i didn't want to scrape up all my knees following her out too far. next time i'll have to find a nicer swimming spot for her second beach trip.dutch came along too and kept things exciting as always. dutch is really a lab, much more so than allie, so it's good for allie to watch some other dogs and maybe pick up some lab behavior. she's so anti-social. loving humans, ignoring other dogs, what a wuss. won't even fetch the tennis balls we brought. but at least now she knows that she likes to swim (poor thing is totally deprived of all dog-like activity at my parents' house) so looks like i'll have more dog at the beach sessions to look forward to this summer. maybe sooner rather than later because the weather has just been fan-frickin'-tastic... and since north shore has been flat as a lake now's a good time to take the dog (i mean, surf's been pumping on the south shore, but i'm a north shore kinda guy... i'll wait for my clean haleiwa waves to roll in next week, boom).

#259 - makapu'u and the start of summer

the first day of summer and what do i do? go out with co-workers. haha, nah, i gotta get over this work-stigma... i never like to see work people outside of "work," but sometimes it's not a bad thing right? anyway, so i went on the makapu'u lighthouse trail with my friends from work (see, that's a step up from calling them "co-workers") on wednesday. now... i was told "hey matt, we're gonna do the makapu'u lighthouse trail on wednesday, you wanna come?" right, so of course i said "sure, i've been on that trail before and i liked it so i'll go again." that was the week before... tuesday comes along and this is what i hear from another co-worker, "hey matt, they're not going on the paved trail, did you know that?" i, of course, did not know that because when they first said "makapu'u lighthouse trail" i googled it to make sure that i knew which one they were talking about and on every page i clicked it all said "2 mile round trip, paved road to the makapu'u lighthouse."

oh, the deception.

anyway, so when we get to the parking lot on wednesday their plan was to skip the paved trail and go up the mountain another way... on a different "trail." i use quotation marks because their idea of "trail" was jumping over a rock wall (clue #1 that you are going somewhere you should not go) and following a set of pipes up and over the mountain on the cliff side (clue #2 - big scary drop-off of death) to get to the observation site at the end of the actual paved road (clue #1 that this is where people actually belong). if you've been there you might have an idea of where they went, but in the picture above you can see the main parking lot... just further past that along the main road is a look-out site (right where the ocean comes into view) where they started their "hike" (jumping a rock wall in the process) and hiking up the left-side of the mountain on the right of the picture (meanwhile, my much smarter friend and i were safely, and happily on the paved trail taking this picture).we got to the observation deck pretty quickly (and happily... and smartly) and i took this picture of those other guys on the top of the mountain after they had climbed up from their side and hiked down the near-side of the mountain to the same observation deck... see them all the way up there perched perilously with no discernable way down? haha. nah, they were okay, but two of them elected to take the paved road back down instead of going back the way they came, haw haw. anyway, it was a fun day, had some greek food at the koko marina center on our way back home, took a shower and crashed on my couch for the rest of the day... and so begins my summer, hopefully all my days will start with beach and end with a shower and crashing on my couch... good stuff.

#258 - the greatest

so... any more doubters? how can you doubt the greatest tennis player of all time? well, he's been that in my opinion for that last few years already (i'm too young to have seen laver or lendl or even borg so i don't and won't compare those guys), forget that he's now got the career grand slam (wins at the australian open, french open, wimbledon, and the us open) and that he's tied pete sampras' all-time record of 14 grand slam titles, his style of play is a thing of beauty. whether he's playing for the title or playing the first round of umag i'm still watching his matches.

but today he leaves no more doubt. even though it wasn't nadal on the other side of the court, he beat robin soderling (who took out nadal) for the title and got the win. now it's on to wimbledon where he can (hopefully) again try to take revenge for last year's loss to nadal in "greatest match ever played" (and you better believe if it wasn't for the fact that nadal won there would be no quotation marks around that) and try and win his 6th wimbledon title (and you better believe if he serves like he did during the french open on grass he'll do it easy) and break sampras' grand slam record going for title #15. hoo boy, exciting next month.. i can't wait.