I mean, I thrown in the towel on this blog many times before. Then, on various inspired whims, unthrown it for a spell. But it’s time to officially invoke the mercy rule.

For the time being, I will leave in search of free food online for posterity. Eventually, I intend to archive this site into a non-Wordpress form, and I will allow the domain to lapse. Enjoy what you can, while you can.

I am planning a more official and adult (non-blog) web presence. Expect it to launch soon at leetucker.net.

Thanks for the good times kiddies!

One thing about living in DC is that you know that there are politically plugged-in people all over the place.  Almost everyone follows politics in this town, even if they’re not directly involved in politics.  The city trends heavily Democratic, and anyone who has spent time downtown knows that the city is totally run by young people—the kind that love to use text messaging.

In other words, I’m expecting an awful lot of text message recipients in this town when Obama announces his VP pick.

I fully expect entire rooms full of people to stop, stare at their cell phones for a second, and then break into some sort of furious uproar.  This is a sociological experiment I don’t want to miss.  I will continue to jump into action every time my phone vibrates today and tomorrow.

So Barack: on my lunch break, perhaps?

Current Quick Vote results on CNN.com

On the one hand, this is more than a little disconcerting. More than anything, it shows the extent to which the politicization of energy politics in this country makes it impossible for any politician to give real answers. It’s so bad that even a celebrity who’s famous only for being famous can give better suggestions!

On the other hand, I think this proves once and for all that Paris Hilton is much more a brilliant self-marketer than a clueless socialite.

Sorry if I was a little terse yesterday when I pulled into the alley.  I didn’t mean to interrupt your barbecue session, I was just a little surprised to find my spot blocked by a charcoal grill and a group of people.

Generally speaking, I want to reward the consumption of grilled meats.  Please do not see my actions as contrary to that noble cause.  Also, please know that I only turned down the burger you offered to throw on the grill because I knew that my girlfriend was already cooking dinner.  I hope you continued to grill behind and/or next to my car, and that the perfect browning of your food was not in any way adversely impacted by the fact that you had to move your entire apparatus unexpectedly.

Although I did not realize it at the time I asked you to move, I now realize that you actually live in the house in front of my parking spot.  You do not, as I erroneously believed, live on the other side of the alley, and you’re not the group of people I saw playing beer pong outside last week in the early afternoon.  In light of this revelation, please disregard the snide nature of my request that you move.  In no way can I place you in the same league as the other obstructions I’ve faced, such as churchgoers’ cars, construction trucks, a randomly placed construction barrel, or a passed-out drunk.  Although I have technically paid for the use of this spot, I want you to know that I welcome any use of my spot that improves alley-sharing solidarity.

Next time you want to grill in my parking spot, give me a heads up and I’ll be happy to move my car.  And I hope I can still take a rain check on that burger.

When applying for graduate school in Economics, one’s math score is far and away more important than one’s verbal or writing scores.  Accordingly, my early concerns and efforts focused primarily on remembering the quadratic formula and other such mathematical novelties.  Yet in spite of the (actually true) fact that I had to practice basic long division because I hadn’t tried it in over a decade, I’m starting to feel like I have a pretty solid handle on the quantitative portion of the GRE.  That means that it’s time to start working through those vocab lists.

The problem with most GRE vocab lists is that they are either incredibly massive and include words that any self-respecting person should remember (one website devoted specifically to GRE vocab actually gave me the word “screw” as a flashcard), or they are far too limited to cover the zillions of words that I last used in an essay on The Catcher in the Rye and have since pushed to the same dark recesses of my brain as my once-impressive knowledge of Step By Step episodes.

The obvious answer to studying vocab for a computer-adaptive standardized test… is a computer-adaptive vocab list.  That’s where FreeRice comes in.  No doubt some of you have engaged in this slightly-more-than-mindless pursuit while slacking off at the office.  In stark contrast, I hope to use its silly games for good.  While I’m still doing practice questions and looking up words left and right, I’ve yet to find a better practice method.  Hopefully, within a week, I can shake some of the rust off of my rather, um, pendulous definition of pendulous.  Oh, yeah, and I guess if some folks get some rice out of the deal that’s pretty good too.

Now, once I’ve used the website to become a poor graduate student, how do I go about getting some of that free rice?

by colros

I’m a flabby mess.

It’s time I do something about this.  I’m going to lose 10 pounds, goshdarnit, and I’m to do it the old-fashioned way; by blogging about it!  Well, not solely by blogging about it.  Frankly, I don’t type fast enough to get much of a workout.  No, I will in fact be stuck going the dreaded diet and exercise route.

I’ve made some other attempts to clean up my act recently, but to this point, my efforts haven’t exactly been well-executed.  For example, my gym membership began June 1st. and It took me until July 14th to actually use the thing (thanks heavy employer gym subsidies!).  Yeah, I think I’m going to have to do better than that.

However, enough is enough, and as of this week I’m making a real effort to pick up my game.  I’ve managed to make it to my gym’s pool twice, and I’m hoping to make my sets a several-time-a-week occurrence.  I already bike to work and swing dance plenty, but integrating a little bit more deliberate exercise into my routine—and laying off the employer-provided free snacks—should help me focus on achieving my goal.

Well, that’s the hope anyway.  As someone who’s managed to lose 50 pounds before, you’d think I ought to be able to manage a modest 10 pretty handily.  But then again, I’ve said I was going to do this more than a few times before.  I guess I’m hoping that in telling you about it, I’ll be shamed into having enough motivation to actually complete the task.

If you see me on the street, feel free to tell me how chubby I look today.  I’ll take all the motivational help I can get.

If you can’t tell by the track listings, I’m a huge Ellington fan. Nearly half the songs are by Ellington or his sidemen. I guess it may look weird in print, but I tend to go in phases like this, and my opinion is that as long as the crowd’s happy, I’m happy. I’ve never really subscribed to the philosophy that being a good swing dance DJ requires the ability to source incredibly obscure tracks from artists that even most swing DJs have heard. Rather, I think that the key traits are attention to the energy of the room and… well, frankly, taste.

On that count, I guess I’ll leave it to you to decide (below the jump).

In the meantime, consider the latest breaking news coverage.

Why? Why, cute girl walking down the street by my office, must you be wearing such a cute top with Crocs?

After the Great Escalator Shoe-Munching Scandal of 2007, I thought we were rid of you.  Like rogue guerilla rebels, I thought the offending shoes would be purged from the cities, be relegated to hillside bunkers, and would eventually be left to die and rot in their caves.  I thought that any remaining Croc-wearing luddites would soon lose enough toes to get the picture and send their Crocs back to the mall kiosk from whence they came.

I was wrong.

If, in this day in age, even cute girls can wear Crocs, what shame is left for our society?  For years, decades, centuries we have looked to the attractive women of the world guide us away from all sorts of terrible ideas.  Just when we we as American people were about to go off the deep end, attractive women would take charge and save us from our own excesses with some inexplicable logic about the new Fall season.  Can we really trust these people now?

For shame!

Photo by Netream

In the car ride on the way there, laser tag seemed like a great idea.  The anticipation of getting both a laser tag ticket and a skate rental even made the long line at the entrance seem a little shorter.  I strapped on my plastic vest, powered up my laser gun, and stepped into the darkness, ready to do battle.

The rush of disappointment was swift and thorough.  The arena couldn’t have been much larger than my DC apartment, and without sufficient obstacles or hiding places, the game got old quickly.  What’s worse, I sucked.  Maybe I wasn’t exactly the big bumbling county bumpkin of a target for snarky suburban children that I recall, but the low lighting and the fog machine surely couldn’t obscure the fact that this wasn’t a place for me.  By the end of the game, I was more than ready to strap my skates back on and get back to the regularly scheduled mindless activities.  And let’s face it, anytime that rolling repeated ovals around a room in which you know three people seems more appealing than the activity at hand, you’re not exactly likely to return.

Clearly my friend Jason lived a less awkward childhood than mine.  What else would possess a grown man to invite all his friends for a game of birthday-related laser tag?  I had a few hesitations, but I could sense that maybe this time would be better than the last.  So last Saturday, I dutifully headed out into the Falls Church hinterlands to do battle.

Frankly, laser tag was awesome.  Instead of being a walking target for the little kiddies, I owned them.  And since they weren’t my kids, and their parents had already committed the cardinal sin of living in NoVa, I needed have no qualms about reveling in it.  The space was huge, with plenty of obstacles, and I actually managed to be a pretty solid player.  Plus, frankly, it’s much more fun to trash talk your 25-year-old friends than your teenager cousins that you only see once a year.

Will any amount of laser-aided destruction atone for my awkward childhood?  In a word, no.  But will I enthusiastically attend our next laser tag outing?  Yes, and I will bring my game face and my sense of entitlement.  Be ready.