I don’t seem to be able to finish writing anything I start these days so I thought I’d post a collection of some links I caught myself sending to other people over the past couple days.

This is from RD’s sister’s man’s blog and talks about a new device that helps you wake up better. It’s a watch-like contraption you wear to sleep and, by measuring your biometrics, the watch keeps track of your sleep cycles. This allows it to predict the best time to wake you up in the morning, usually while you’re sleeping lightest.

Bill Simmons has done it again and it’s only a matter of time before people accuse me of making him my binky. After this weekend’s donnybrook between the Red Sox and Devil Rays, ESPN reprinted this 2002 column about basebrawls. In this long column, Simmons goes into detail describing 12 reasons baseball fights are so great. Reason #9 is especially poignant in lieu of Trot Nixon’s actions this weekend, though Simmons disputes the existence of a “Crazy Guy” in this weekend’s imbroglio. I guess it’s his column so I’ll defer to him.

Imagine being able to search for files on your computer by the location you worked on them last. I know, my mind was boggled too. GPS enabled laptops are coming, and I can’t wait…

Another reason to love kottke.org this morning is the McSweeney’s RSS feed he created for the good of all mankind. If you haven’t read any of the lists at McSweeney before, you might be interested to in Actual Ways I Have Been Flirted With That, in the Future, I Wish You Would Refrain From, With Explanations as to Why, and Suggestions for Alternative Methods. and Reasons to Fear Canada..

I’d like to find out from Mel Kiper, Jr if the point of the NFL draft is to choose attractive, athletic players of if the point is to win Super Bowls. Because Kiper seems to want athletes, not champions. I can’t think of any other reason he would give the Patriots a C in this draft when they drafted 4 players that can presumably help immediately and ALSO picked up a 3rd, 4th, and 5th round pick in next year’s draft. Also, Mr. Kiper, who cares if “Matt Cassel is a big project at quarterback”, did the Patriots make an underreported draft day trade of Tom Brady for Jay Fiedler? In the same column (and although he gave the Broncos a C as well), Kiper describes the Broncos selection for Maurice Clarrett by saying he’ll “defer to coach Mike Shanahan when it comes to fitting the right players into his system”. This is obviously a reference to Shanahan’s ability to take ANY athlete and turn them into a 1200 yard running back. If Shanahan is getting that type of leeway, shouldn’t Belichick’s THREE SUPER BOWLS IN FOUR YEARS give him the same type of draft capital?
Kiper’s Patriots’ draft rating for those of you without access to ESPN Insider.
New England Patriots: C
Guard Logan Mankins was a reach in the first round but the Patriots obviously like his size and nastiness, and he will help fill the void left by Joe Andruzzi’s departure via free agency. Ellis Hobbs has good size but not enough skill to be more than a nickel back, and safety James Sanders was a teammate of Mankins at Fresno State and both were helped by the relationship between Patriots coach Bill Belichick and Fresno State coach Pat Hill. Tackle Nick Kaczur could play guard as well but came off the board a little early and Matt Cassel is a big project at quarterback.

3 other happenings of note in the last week:
I’m definitely not the most pious of Jews, but I do my best to observe Passover every year. This time around, however, the boys at Streits, threw me for a loop on my very first meal. Apparently, they sell matzah these days that’s “Not for Passover Use.” How many seemingly observant Jews have been ambushed thusly?

While walking to work the other day, bird poop splattered on the pavement mere inches from my feet. It was almost like almost getting hit by a car. Almost. You have to admit, something like that is pretty omenesque. My outlook on the morning changed and then I got to work and realized nothing was going to be different, so although I was glad to not to get hit by bird poop, I didn’t look at it as an omen anymore.

The parking lot at the train station employs the use of an honor box to charge for parking. I’m constantly forgetting to look at what parking space I’m in before I walk away from my car. In the middle of last week, this happened and I walked back to figure out for which space I had to pay. A combination of tiredness, being late for the train, and general brain dysfunction forced me to determine the wrong space for my car. (Admittedly, I didn’t walk all the way back to my car, but stopped at the beginning of the row and counted down to my spot, incorrectly). When that happens, I pay for the wrong space and come back in the evening to find an envelope on my car asking for the parking fee plus $1 service charge. I deserve it. This day was different, though, because on my way to the honor box after figuring out which space I was in, the woman who had parked next to me was also walking back to figure out her space. I smiled widely and exclaimed “You forgot also, right? I do that all the time. You’re in 723.” Random act of kindness? I feel bad about it, but she probably got an envelope, too. Oh well, it’s all in the thought, I hope.

For those of you who know me, it won’t come as much of a surprise, but smoothie season is here again. Tonight I bought all the ingredients for a week’s worth of smoothies, and almost instantaneously my diet will be more than 26 times better per day. Literally. I went from eating about 4 pieces of fruit a month to about 3.5 servings a day.

The best morning smoothie recipe (Serves 2):
2 bananas
Half a pound of frozen strawberries
4 ounces frozen raspberries
3-6 ounces frozen blueberries
Some orange juice
In this order, put bananas, strawberries, blueberries, raspberries. Pour OJ into blender until it comes 2/3 of the way up to the strawberries. (More OJ will make the smoothie thinner, less will make it thicker). Blend. When a cyclone starts in the middle of the smoothie, it is perfectly blended. Pour smoothies, rinse pitcher, repeat.

Dessert smoothie recipe (Serves 2):
1 banana
Half a pound of frozen raspberries
4 ounces frozen strawberries
2 ounces frozen blueberries
Even less orange juice
Chocolate chips
This smoothie is created about the same as the breakfast smoothie, but it’s got a higher raspberry percentage. Mix the smoothie and pour half into each cup. Put a layer of chocolate chips into each cup and pour the rest of the smoothie. Top of with a few chocolate chips. This smoothie is not only tasty, but fun to eat also. The chocolate chips add a little texture and activity to the normally docile smoothie.

Other things I’ve learned about smoothies:
The trade off between fresh fruit and frozen fruit is with the frozen stuff, you don’t need to water your smoothie down with ice. More tang for the buck.

Chocolate syrup is a good add-in for giving a regular smoothie a little kick.

Milk works instead of OJ if you want it to be even creamier.

The creamiest smoothie can be had by adding a big dollop of plain or vanilla yogurt to either of the recipes above. This is how JR likes it, but since I do all of the smoothie cheffing, I make the rules, and she gets yogurt only on special mornings.

Blackberries are the lowest of all suitable smoothie berries. They’re cheap, sweet, and give the smoothie a dark purple color, but the seeds are giant and always get stuck in your teeth.

Salon, the online magazine, ran an article recently on the topic of penis enlargement. The phrase “penis enlargement,” in addition to being delightfully fun to say or write over and over again, is familiar (of course) to all of us from our email inboxes. Judging from the spam that I receive, I would estimate that most of America needs to refinance its mortgage, has a small penis, and has difficulty maintaining an erection. It’s a sorry state of affairs.

My wife and I are fortunate (and I truly pray that her mother never reads this) in that we are quite satisfied with each other’s physical attributes. When she forwarded me the link to the aforementioned article, she enclosed a note saying simply: “Please do not enlarge your penis.” I have made it very clear to her on numerous occasions that if she were to augment her breasts in any way I would be much displeased.

I understand being dissatisfied with one’s body. For about the first 24 years of my life, I was a pretty scrawny kid. I certainly would have preferred less twiggy legs, less bony wrists, broader shoulders, straighter hair, a smaller nose, and so on. Some of those things, I recognized, could be obtained with a rigorous program of diet and exercise, but I candidly told myself that that wasn’t going to happen and over-compensated with a winning personality. So although I certainly had body-related insecurities, I’ve never really given much thought to, nor had insecurity related to, the magnitude, shall we say, of my own particular … magnitude.

I know that a lot of guys are insecure about their penises. Well, I guess I should clarify that I believe that a lot of guys are. I can’t really recall ever discussing it with any of my male friends. The showers at my summer camp were communal, and certainly I, and other guys, felt uncomfortable at first with the process not because we were worried about being assessed and judged negatively, but simply because given the choice, wouldn’t you prefer to perform your daily ablutions without an audience? In fact, the only penis-size comments I remember from those camp showers were along the lines of “Dude, check out so-and-so, he’s huge!” I don’t think anyone was made fun of because of his size, large or small.

(A brief aside to comment on the injustice that the boys’ showers were a big open communal area, while the girls’ showers had individual stalls with curtains. Why?)

I can’t imagine that the hype over penis size started with women. My female informant tells me that most of her peers are perfectly satisfied with an average-sized penis, and that size in and of itself is not a turn-on. This must come as terrible news to the penis enlargers out there, or to men with big penises who still can’t get a date.

Now, obviously a man wants to be pleasing to his partner, and insecurity about exposing one’s self is perfectly natural. Being naked in front of someone is a vulnerable enough position even without having your naked bits judged on their own merits. And the sex act itself is surrounded (at first, at least) with so much awkwardness and doubt that it’s understandable that a man might worry about his performance. Obviously, the precise physical compatibilities between two people factor pretty significantly into how well a sexual relationship progresses, and if one partner is unsatisfied with the extent, so to speak, of his or her partner’s endeavors — shall we say — that will weigh heavily over them both. If your girlfriend or boyfriend tells you that you’re too small to satisfy them (a scenario I suspect is fairly uncommon), being driven to seek out penis enlargement methods (or a new girlfriend or boyfriend) is at least rational.

What isn’t rational is what I think must be the uniquely American desire to be big for bigness’s sake. There’s something not quite right, I opine, with someone who looks at a ruler and sees a challenge to his manhood.

While I will concede that there are probably women (and men) who prefer a partner with a large penis, I have to believe that one eventually reaches a point of diminishing returns. This big, good; any bigger, not so good. Setting aside the problem of inconvenience for the man himself (at some of the advertised sizes, I’d think you’d have trouble dressing in a way that doesn’t cause discomfort to the pants region), eventually you’re risking discomfort for your partner, aren’t you? Put as plainly as possible, one never sees advertisements for vaginal enlargement, which one might expect (from a purely heterosexist point of view) to be the natural counterpart to an outbreak of enlarged penises.

The process of “natural penis enlargement” described in the article sounds off-putting, to say the least, what with the stretching, and the bending, and the pulling, and the twisting, and the weights…. I might suggest that if one is going to spend all day manipulating one’s penis, there are far more enjoyable things that one could be doing to it.

And at whom is this targeted, anyway? I have to believe the prime demographic is single, slightly depressed men who’ve convinced themselves that it’s their penis size that has been holding them back from ever finding true love. This logic is pretty warped, since the only way for someone to adequately judge you on your penis size is for him (or her) to see you naked, and if you’re naked with her (or him) you’re already doing pretty well, I have to think.

If a man is already in a relationship, what benefit does penis enlargement provide? If my partner ever said to me, “Matt, things are going pretty well, but to be honest I’d really be happier if you had a bigger penis,” I’d spend my time online looking for dating sites, rather then penis enlargement methods, if you see what I mean.

If he isn’t in a relationship, does he really think that a bigger dick will help him get first dates? I’d think you’d have to spend a lot of time in Speedos which, outside of a swimming environment, might strike people as odd. And even if our hypothetical guy manages to get someone to sleep with him, what makes him think that a below-the-belt upgrade will help things along? Is the idea that someone will eventually say, “well, his personality sucks, but you should see the size of that schlong”?

Every time an email arrives in my inbox advertising a process by which to “make it huge” I get a little sad, thinking of some poor, average-dicked fellow who fears that, if someone is going to the trouble of sending out these offers, there must be people responding to them, and he’ll soon be the only man left who isn’t carrying the equivalent of a Polish kielbasa in his pants. He’s sitting there, with his second mortgage, and his illicitly obtained Cialis, looking at some freakishly-endowed porn star, and thinking “that could be me.”

My friend, you don’t want that to be you. Find someone to embrace the penis you have, not the penis you see on the internet, or simply embrace it yourself. But — and I can’t overemphasize this — embrace it gently.

…But I don’t mind reading about it when Bill Simmons is doing the writing. I agree with most of what he says most of the time and he has anywhere from one to three references per column that I wish I had written down before him because they’re mostly perfect. Plus, like Peter Gammons and Sean McAdam, he’s a Boston homer and about 75% of his columns are about Boston teams. When it comes to reading about basketball, I may as well be reading about the Celtics, right?

(This might be another column, but you know how the Righties incessantly complain about the “liberal” mainstream media without providing facts to support their claim? I think if I lived in another part of the country, I might complain about the so-called national sports media’s Northeast/ Boston slant. I’m not going to do it, but a scientific survey of ESPN.com would probably prove a higher percentage of stories are written about the Red Sox-Yankees-Patriots than any other 5-8 teams combined. In acknowledging this bias, I feel like the millionaires who sit up in their castles pointing out world problems without taking any steps to correct them. It’s so easy to do. But the view is great up here and I enjoy feeling like a millionaire sitting in my castle. Since I benefit from the bias, I’m not going to make a stink).

The most recent reason I owe Bill Simmons is his column last week was responsible for pointing me towards Paul Shirley’s blog. I’m not sure it can actually can be considered a blog, since it was written over 5 days and I don’t think there was any plan for it to be updated infinitely. I don’t really know what the definition of a blog is, though, so call it whatever you want. Paul Shirley is a 27 year-old forward who fills the “Suns’ need for a warm body to keep the bench from tipping toward the coaches.” He doesn’t play much, and didn’t actually play at all on the 5 game/ 8 day road trip in mid-March. He did, however keep a journal of his thoughts during the trip and the result is great. Bill Simmons said something like it fulfills the wish we all have of having a friend in the NBA and getting daily emails from him. (Personally, if I had a friend doing anything and sending me a daily email about it, I’d probably change my email address, but being able to go to his website to read at my own leisure would certainly keep our friendship intact.) Anyway, Paul Shirley probably doesn’t have much of a grand future in the NBA, but judging by his writing, he’ll probably end up OK whenever he blows out a knee or decides to hang it up for other reasons. Since I don’t think any of the people reading this will actually click through to Paul’s blog, I’ve grabbed a couple of the choicest quotations for your reading pleasure. Enjoy!

-Paul reviews the beach in Spain

“The greatest thing about living near the water is that there is always something to do. Bored? Go to the beach. Can’t figure out what to do at the end of a first date? Go to the beach. Got a few knock-off sunglasses that need sold? Go to the beach. The only problem with my time in Spain was that the beach in Barcelona set the bar a bit high—because of the rampant toplessness.”

-Paul on tattoos

“Tom Gugliotta has the worst tattoo in the NBA. The barbed wire on the bicep is bad enough to put him in the running; the fact that it is the dreaded “I thought I could get away with not having it complete the circumference of my arm” type puts him over the top. It is like wearing a tie that is not only ugly, but is a clip-on to boot. Ugly is at least forgivable; the clip-on aspect makes it reprehensible.”

-Paul on the possibility of playing

“I began considering the possibility that there could very well be a bit of playing time in the offing and started paying at least cursory attention to what was going on in timeouts, in case Coach D’Antoni said something like, “From now on tonight, everyone will be shooting with his left hand. Deviation from this plan of attack will result in castration immediately following the game.” I would really hate to miss one of those instructions, come out firing, and because of my own mental lapse, ruin the rest of my life.”

-Paul on being tired even after not playing

“When the game was over, I was fatigued, much like usual. It is difficult to explain, but it is exhausting to, over a two and a half hour period, keep oneself vaguely mentally prepared, yet relaxed enough to theoretically play basketball. Now, don’t get me wrong—it is not nearly as taxing as, say, playing 38 minutes and huffing and puffing up and down the court. There is, however, a little more to it than would first appear. Of course, as my dad would say, it still beats the hell out of digging ditches, so I won’t complain.”

-Paul on meeting Magic Johnson in an exercise room

“We all wandered over and chatted with Mr. Johnson. He was gracious, kind, and charming, just like everyone says. I did notice that, when I introduced myself, he did not tell me his name. I, of course, know his name—the above paragraph would have been difficult to write without that knowledge. I do not know, however, what I am supposed to call him now. Magic? Seems a bit odd. Earvin? Seems a bit forced. It will be a dilemma that haunts me.”

-Paul on the Atlanta Hawks

“Saying the Hawks are a bad basketball team is like saying that living in Beirut would be exciting—true, but not really the whole story. The Hawks are really, really bad.”

I’ve never been prouder to be from Massachusetts. If only Ed Markey was my representative. In an epic example of how politicians state the utterly obvious while attempting to appear smart, Markey had this to say, “The more daylight we have, the less electricity we use.” Oh really, Congressman, thanks, what else can you tell us? “The more time we waste passing kind of dumb laws, the less we actually get done in Congress with the power invested in us by the voting public.” [Imaginative quotational extrapolation mine]

I guess it’s OK that some of Congress was working on this bill, because in another part of the capital, other members of Congress were trying to tell Apple how to run their business. I don’t think Steve Jobs heard them, though, because he didn’t show up.

Tonight I went with JO, W, and N to see Bloc Party at the Paradise. After working as the road manager for a touring band for the past 3 years or so, I don’t really enjoy going to concerts that much anymore. Growing up I was at the Saturday and Sunday afternoon all ages matinees all the time. Now it’s kind of boring going to shows, though. In fact, the last time I saw live music recreationally was in Sept of 2003, and then it was only because my new favorite band was in DC the same night as the band I worked with.

Bloc Party isn’t my newest favorite band, but I did start listening to them recently enough that I was still semi-excited about the idea of going to see them. To me they sound like what U2 would sound like if U2 started today. The music was pretty good. They played for just long enough for me to get bored (35 minutes) and then during the encore I was so excited to go home, that I was excited again. I guess you can’t expect much from a band with only one album, but you’d think they would have SOME other material, maybe a cover or two?

Being at the show with JO, W, and N was fun, too. Instead of joining in the hipster fashion parade, I think it’s safe to say that they’ve internalized hipsterdom to the point of almost complete and total cynicism. Maybe that’s a generalization. It was interesting, though, that everyone in the crowd we mocked (which was everyone) totally deserved it. There was the giant in the suede jacket who didn’t realize his height and couldn’t decide between leaning over and talking to his friend or crashing in to various members of our party. There was the frat boys who accosted the band for tickets at dinner before the show. (We were in the table next to BP, who, in their defense, refrained from returning any dishes or ordering copious amounts of JD). And then there were the fashionistas that looked like they raided their dad’s closet from 1975 before the show. I mean, has anyone going to indie or British Dance Rock shows looked at themselves in the mirror lately? Mods with bad haircuts? Preppies with torn sports coats? I’m not sure these people know.

Music and fashion are so closely linked and I wonder why. I stopped going to hardcore shows when Straight Edge became more of a fashion statement than an ethos. SxE varsity leather jackets = lame no matter how fervent your belief in a ‘my body is a temple’ philosphy. However, thinking about it for a second, I can’t really say that’s why I stopped going. Not wanting to deal with hipster kids, though, is a good enough reason to stay home any day. And I don’t think JO, W, and N are alone in their internal hipsterdom, either. I imagine a movement afoot. I wonder if there will someday be a battle for true hipsterdom and all the fashion hipsters (LOOKING like you’re too cool for school) will do battle with the emotional hipsters (KNOWING you’re too cool for school). It’s unclear who would win this battle, quantity or quality, but one thing’s for certain, bands like Bloc Party would probably stop selling so many tickets.