Interest on Pennies (pun intended) - 12/5/05
A couple responses to Friday's penny post:

FROM MINNESOTA FRIEND SARAH:
Pennies manufactured after 1983 are no longer made of copper but Zinc. And they're toxic to animals when swallowed. It "steals" iron away from red blood cells causing a type of anemia as well as liver damage.
~Sarah

Gee, that's good. Pennies are already useless; why not make them poisonous, too?

FROM LA FRIEND MOLLY:
If you put one penny in a 10% savings account then in 30 years you'll have $17... just read it in a finance textbook.
-Molly

But who wants to wait that long for a gumball? (That's probably how much a gumball will cost by then, considering inflation). I say just eat the gumball now, and you'll still be digesting it in 30 years.

ALSO FROM MOLLY:
...And if you put a button in a 10% interest savings account, you'll have a button after 30 years.
-M

But a very hip, retro button.

Got a comment? Email me! (I'm too lazy to put up one of those auto-comment features... at least for now).

Surprise Trip to Minnesota - 12/6/05
Defying popular prediction, Mama Jury did not cry when Mark and I surprised her by flying in unexpectedly for her and Papa Jury's 30th Wedding Anniversary this past weekend. She did, however, shriek deafeningly for about five minutes and nearly strangle me.

The brief trip home reacquainted me with just how goddamn cold it is in Minnesota during the winter. It also reacquainted me with an event I'd nearly forgotten that occured during our trip to Brown to watch Alex play football a couple weeks ago (by the way, Brown has since won the Ivy League Championship and Alex was named All-Ivy, as well as several other awards. Much props, little bro).

During the game, a promotional organizer interrupted our chest-paint anagram rampage to "borrow" Mark for a half-time event involving seeing who could hit a fake golf ball as close to a target as possible. Since one of the other contestants was the captain of Brown's golf team, and because Mark was extremely drunk, I sagely advised him to "just try and hit the ball as far as you goddamn can." That Mark did, and though the wiffle-ball-ness of the ball prevented his shot from going as far as we'd hoped, he still put on a pretty good show and amused everyone with his antics.

Anyway, back in Minnesota, Alex showed me a newspaper write-up in the Brown Herald that had been done on the event.

Though it's hilarious that the giant letter "T" must have seemed even more out of place on the back of a shirtless golfer than it did in our drunken anagram trio, the best thing about the article as that Mark was considered "arguably a hero."

Arguably? He's always been my hero. Or at least he is now.

More Fun With Pennies - 12/8/05
To answer a couple questions that have been coming in regarding the penny posts, no, I don't think Molly actually found a savings account that yielded 10% interest. Maybe a medium-risk mutual fund. That accepts pennies. And buttons. Like at the Button Bank of America (BBOA).

And true, Jeff, a penny invested at 10% interest wouldn't yield anything close to $17.00 in 30 years, even compounded continuously (not to sound like a huge nerd or anything). Maybe Molly meant a dollar. Personally, I'd rather spend that dollar on 100 gumballs and be happy today.

And yes, Jeremy, your friend Dan should be commended for throwing pennies away just to his civic duty of curbing inflation by taking money out of circulation. I prefer to smoke joints make of fifty-dollar bills, but that's just me. I'm sure if Alan Greenspan were here, he'd shake Dan's hand.

That's all I got.

Standardized Test Triathlon (or: How I Broke My Brain) - 12/12/05
Yesterday was my birthday, which means Saturday around 11:59pm, I was very much "in the party spirit." And by that I mean I was drunk. It was also our 2nd annual Pop Star/Karaoke party, for which I donned maybe the gnarliest 80's glam-rocker wig you've ever seen, so hopefully I'll have some pictures up in a few days. Unless I suddenly decide I want to run for office someday.

Last week, I did something of which I'm not sure whether to be proud or ashamed: the standardized test triathlon. What does this mean? It means that on Tuesday I took the GMAT, on Wednesday I took the LSAT, and on Thursday I took the GRE. Actually, only the GRE was the real test - the other two were merely practice tests - but it was still about ten hours of pretty intense test-taking.

Why would I do such a retarded thing? The reason I'm telling everybody is that since I'm in the test prep business, I need to know as much about the different kinds of tests as possible, and I figured I might as well get them all over with in one fell swoop. But the real reason is that apparently I'm some kind of self-hating masochist who likes weird challenges (as my marathon, triathlon and ultimate beerpong misadventures suggest). I also may have been smoking opium at the time.

By the end of Thursday, my brain was so sore all I could do was drive home and take a nap. Then I got up and tried to drink 1,200 useless vocabulary words out of my head.

I won't go into how the tests went, but I'm hoping to still have a pretty good shot at El Camino Junior College's prestigious Fine-Arts-Entrepreneurial-Lawyer program.

Johnny's Response to the Test Triathalon Post... - 12/13/05
<<<
-----Original Message-----
From: Green, Johnny
Sent: Tuesday, December 13, 2005 4:17 AM
To: paul@paulspond.com
Subject: Standardized Test Triathlon (or: How I Broke My Brain)

Paul,

Regarding the following line in your post:
>I also may have been smoking opium at the time.

This actually does not make sense in the context of being highly motivated or thinking erratically and ambitiously. Opium is an opiate, derived from the same plant (the poppy) as strong narcotics, such as codeine, morphine and heroin (although technically, heroin is a synthetic derived from morphine).

Note something all these drugs have in common: an INHIBITORY effect on productivity. These drugs are used as pain killers in the medical community and for pretty much the same thing in the drug use/abuse community. Smoking opium is a lot like smoking pot. There is no way you would have made it through all those tests while taking breaks to smoke opium (no, you can't shoot it, unless you have a chemical lab and a chemist to boot). You would have fallen asleep or overdosed.

May I suggest you revise your sentence to cite a drug more relevant to the situation ... perhaps something from the amphetamine family. Cocaine would have been perfect. Crack would work too, though I doubt you could have sat through all those tests on crack cocaine. You are too hyper as it is. I think blaming your actions on having inhaled crushed Ritalin repeatedly for a prolonged (>24h) period is your best scapegoat. So, in sum, please learn your drug classifications before you begin so carelessly referencing them. This is where misinformation starts.

Johnny

P.S. Opium, heroin, codeine, morphine, cocaine, and crack cocaine are all highly addictive substances! Marijuana and Ritalin (methylphenidate) are arguably addictive, and all of these are controlled substances in the United States. The information above is true and accurate to the best of my knowledge, but nothing is guaranteed to be correct. In NO WAY do I encourage or condone use of any of the above referenced substances.
>>>

Well, Johnny would know.

Words That Are Cool - 12/14/05
Along with this recent test binge I've been on, I've also been learning a lot of new vocabulary words over the past year. For instance, I never knew what a bailiwick was until a week ago, nor did I know what kind of a person a bellwether was. Half of the reason for this has to do with my aspirations of making my full living with words at some point... and the other half has to do with impressing potential SAT parents in order to make my living in the meantime. It also doesn't hurt that I'm a huge, raging nerd.

Most words I've found are simply superfluous synonyms for easier words I already know. Apparently the word pompous isn't enough; it's also important to be able to describe arrogant, overblown speech as orotund, eupheistic, and declamatory. But occasionally I'd come across a word that actually had some use to it. The following words, in my book, are cool:

Assiduous - Hard-working, diligent. I mostly like this word because it's easy to teach to SAT kids. The mnemonic? "One who is assiduous works their ASS off."

Persnickety - Fastidious; paying excessive attention to detail. This is sort of related to assiduous, only it sounds way funnier.

Onus - A burden. This word is great because it sounds like so many other funny words that could be put into a mnemonic... "Otis's onus was to own his own anus."

Onerous - Troubling or burdensome, often legally. I only like this (which stems from 'onus') because it acronyms into "Sour One", which is how I remember it.

Zeugma - "She left in a huff and a Chevy". The cool part about this word is you can't even define it except with an example. "Are you getting fit or having one?" It's a kind of literary device involving word confusion, but it's more fun to think of examples than to define it. "He broke the tape and the record."

Pugnacious - Aggressive, prone to fighting. It's always nice when somebody thinks up a word that just sounds cool.

Jingoism - Belligerent support of one's country. This is such a timely word in these days of civil unrest... and so much more smart-sounding than War-Hawking. I guess you could also define this as Pugnacious Patriotism.

Sinecure - A job (often a high-paying one) that requires little or no work. Finally, I have a wold to describe my security job! Except for the high-paying part.

Stultifying - Stifling or inhibiting to the point of absurdity or ineffect. Finally, I have a word to describe the bureaucracy that runs my security job.

Callipygian - Having shapely buttocks. How could you not love this word? My friend Tiff has declared it "her official favorite word of all time."

Sesquipedalian - Characterized by using long words. Ironic that only someone sesquipedalian would use the word sesquipedalian. An alternative definition means "having many syllables", which just further adds to the irony.

Words That Suck Ass - 12/15/05
...indeed, I learned a couple interesting and useful vocabulary words in my exhaustive GRE prep. But I learned a whole lot more WORDS THAT PISS ME OFF:

Moil - This word literally means "toil", or to work. Why do we need two words that mean the exact same thing and have only one letter different?

Noisome - Looks like it means "noisy", right? No, it means "smelly". It's a sense word, alright... but the wrong one? Stupid.

Ennead - A group of nine. Seriously, do we really need this word?

Pulchritude - Beauty. Yup, nothing says "beauty" like a word that's ugly as hell. I hate you, pulchritude.

Malinger - To evade responsibility by pretending to be sick. Can we be any more specific? So if I evade responsibility by pretending my father died, that's not malingering? And if I evade responsibility by actually being sick, that isn't either? How 'bout if I pretend to be sick, but only to get pity from others? Nope, not malingering either. I guess you gotta really cross your T's if you want to apply this stupid ass word.

Perambulator - A baby carriage. Really? Do we really need another word for baby carriage? Look closely, they're the same number of letters... which one would you rather remember?

Infundabuliform - I routinely use this word as my calling-card "Oh yeah, you think YOU know an obscure vocab word? Check THIS out." Infundabuliform means "funnel-shaped", and has only been used once ever in literature, as far as I can tell. Catch-22, the most needlessly wordy book of all time, used it once to describe a character's "infundibuliform jowels". First of all, who the fuck cares what somebody's jowels are shaped like? Most people don't even know what jowels ARE. Second of all, can't we just say "funnel-shaped"? It's way clearer, way easier to pronounce, and for the love of god, "funnel-shaped" HAS LESS LETTERS IN IT than "infundibuliform". Clearly, humanity does not need this word. I think Joseph Heller just made it up to piss us all off.

Precipitate - You think you know this one? It means "to rain or snow", right? Or does it mean "to bring about". Or is an adjective that means "happening quickly"? Or does it refer to high places? It's all these things. Precipitate is a stupid word with so many meanings it renders itself completely useless a word. Referring to anything from causing action to throwing things to falling off cliffs, precipitate can be used as a verb, noun or adjective. In the dictionary I looked in, it required three separate dictionary entries (each of significant length), to say nothing of its various alternate forms, including "precipitant", "precipitable", "precipitancy" or "precipitation". I think if was a dictionary writer and my boss tried to give me this word, I'd kill him and them myself.

Palimpsest - A surface that has been written on, erased or covered, then reused for something else. All I have to say is, if I ever catch anybody using this word, I will give them a medal and then choke them to death.

Double Traffic - 12/17/05
I was talking to a friend the other day as we were stuck in a ridiculous Wednesday 8pm traffic jam, and she said traffic in LA supposed to become twice as bad in the next five years.

The only response I could think of: "How!?"

Don't get me wrong - we absolutely can see how traffic will keep getting worse as LA continues to sprawl. More people keep moving here, they keep buying more cars, and the increased smog restrictions resulting in decreased yellow smog haze is fooling us into thinking this is somehow all OK. But again, the question remains "How? How could traffic possibly get twice as bad?"

Considering that it's no longer possible to exceed 10 miles per hour on the freeway from 6am-9am and 2:30pm-7pm Monday through Thursday, or ever on Fridays and Saturdays, and even going somewhere at 2am only gives you a 90% chance of not hitting a ridiculous traffic jam, I'm not sure how "twice as bad" is possible. Even there were a traffic jam on every road in LA, 24 hours a day, I'm pretty sure this would only be like 1.6 times as bad as it is now.

Let me consider the issue statistically. By my calculations, there are currently 86 hours in the week during which the 405 is undrivable - 14 hours per day Monday-Thursday, and all day long Friday and Saturday. There are only 168 hours in a week. Even if every single one of these hours was filled with cars, that would still only 86/82, or 95.43 percent worse. Statistically, there's just no way for traffic to get twice as bad… unless we find a way of freezing time and still having it be rush-hour.

Or maybe traffic will actually move backwards. Maybe that's what those shrewd thinkers at the top of LA's transit system have in mind.

Stuff Nobody Else Would Do - 12/19/05
On Saturday morning, I drove up to Pasadena and took the MENSA qualifying exam. This was after crashing on Sam's couch after a night of partying. I have no idea:

A) How it went. All I remember is that there were lots of weird analogy picture problems ({drawing of a magnet} IS TO {drawing of a nail} AS {drawing of the moon} IS TO {drawing of the tide}) and lots of problems involving coins. There was also a memory test where a dude read us a story and then an hour later we had to answer a bunch of questions about the story.

B) Why I did this. I guess after all the tests I took this week, the MENSA thing was the only other test I could think of. Also, I also might have been thinking that if MENSA were stupid enough to let me in, it would be fun to go to one of their meetings drunk.

I'm going to stop now. My nerd-spree has now reached apocalyptic proportions, and it's starting to scare me. But I think it's finally exhausted; perhaps now I can turn my attention on more important things like finding medical insurance.

After the test, I stopped by the Redondo Beach Performing Arts Center and was able to scalp tickets to their 2pm showing of "Cats". Apparently with $29 dollars, you can even scalp tickets to opera. So I watched the show, by myself. The music was good, but has anybody noticed that this play has no plot? Then I played two games of beerpong and went out for Brian's birthday.

When I recapped my day to former-roommate Kolleen, she of course wanted to know what the hell was wrong with me. And I wasn't quite sure. I suppose after randomly driving to Pasadena and taking the MENSA test on a Saturday morning, scalping tickets and going to "Cats" by myself was the only thing I could think of to top it.

But it made me remember one of my primary goals in life: to do as many things as possible that most people would never do. My 26th birthday this past weekend brought to focus a partial list of some things I've done so far...

- Drive to all 48 contiguous states
- Take the GRE, LSAT, GMAT, and MENSA tests... in one week
- Do a marathon and a triathlon
- Have 6 jobs at once
- Start a business

And it's a little early for New Year's stuff, but 2006 will add a few more things to the list...

- Produce a play
- Write a novel
- Bike from LA to Mexico

Maybe it's the birthday thing that's making me all sentimental and life-minded. But whatever motivates me to do more strange-ass shit.

And now I can add Saturday to the list.

The Sign Game - 12/20/05
One of my favorite email games of late is The Sign Game. Invented by friend Jen and myself, this road sign parody game has consumed literally hours of (bored at security) time spent finding stupid road signs, mocking them, and then sending ludicrous emails back and forth. So why not spread the love?

In the original version of the game, you had to guess which was the correct meaning amidst three humorous fake meanings. But then we realized that this version was dumb. Who really cares what the correct meaning is? Why waste the spot when you can think up another stupid fake answer?

And thus, the current rules of the game: for each sign, guess which one I LIKED THE MOST when I was making them up (bored at security). The correct answers are at the bottom (I was too lazy to actually make scripted check-boxes or anything); see how well you do!

1)	(A) Very short train track (B) Do not feed the invisible animals (C) Now entering Suburbia (D) Tom Sawyer-esque painting scam ahead
2)	(A) Caution: Watered-down porn movie (B) Yar, treasure ahead, says I (C) Illiterate bumpkins autographs for sale (D) Chop this sign down, please
3)	(A) Quayside or ferry berth (B) Bridge out… stupid (C) Charlie Brown's shirt with a car-shape cut out of the armpit (D) Good place to drive your Spacemobile into the ocean and collect the insurance money
4)	(A) Candy canes for all (B) Flaccid barbershop (C) Warning: Do not let retarded children paint road signs (D) Dolly Parton bra cup stuck in tree, ahead
5)	(A) Insult to injury ahead (B) Caution: Lava rain (C) Clouds do not stop for drowning people (D) Paraplegic on bumpy road getting rained on, ahead

Sign Game, Round 2 - 12/22/05
For each sign, guess which one I liked the most when I was making them up while bored at security).

1)	(A) No tiny houses (B) Ranger X-ray station (C) Do not enter or I shall be cross (D) Only white people allowed in the Whitehouse
2)	(A) No motorcycle jumping (B) Birthplace of Evel Knievel (C) Free auto-back rides (D) Very low overpass
3)	(A) Curb driving allowed (B) Automobile diving board ahead (C) Car stairway (D) Half-load weight station
4)	(A) Human/Tripod relationships permitted (B) Praying to church steeples allowed (C) Wait here to cross long, skinny airplane runway (D) Elegant cigarette holders for sale
5)	(A) Retarded children crossing (B) Retarded children go right (C) Midget hunting season now open (D) Go the opposite direction of any further signs

Sign Game, Round 3 - 12/26/05
For each sign, guess which one I liked the most when I was making them up while bored at security).

1)	(A) Watch for Dance Dance Revolution players (B) Barefoot wine-making permitted (C) Beware small square tar pits (D) People-plant patch ahead (beware: illiteration)
2)	(A) Snood playing zone (B) Flowers growing out of walls (C) Porcupine lollypops for sale (D) Beware the vengeful eye of Ra the Sun God
3)	(A) Mogul course (B) Watch for discarded bras (C) Beware of melting roadsigns (D) Headless, tailless snake who just ate the Little Prince and his sheep ahead
4)	(A) 5th grade math quiz ahead (B) Caution: Improper shaded-area estimation (C) No trying hard (D) Minimum gratuity zone
5)	(A) I choo-choo-choose you (B) Icky yucky gross polluter (C) Incomplete train (to ride on very short train track) (D) Ink blot test ahead

Sign Game, Round 4 - 12/28/05
For each sign, guess which one I liked the most when I was making them up while bored at security).

1)	(A) Calf-stretch area (B) Awkwardly-positioned public-urination site (C) Umbilical cord zone (D) Man shackled to lump of dirt, ahead
2)	(A) Penii ahead (B) Historical landmark: The Inanimate Carbon Rod was here (C) Giant monster eye, watching you (D) Your hard-drive has just crashed
3)	(A) Trolly carpool lane (B) Transit car equipped with television reception (C) This train carrying diamonds (D) Choo-choo Christmas ornaments ahead
4)	(A) Beware of tripping over musical whole-note rests (B) Mexican hat-dance area (C) Crude, blocky shapes getting elbow-dropped, ahead (D) Getting' jiggy wit' it zone
5) Backwards Question! Which of the following signs has the definition: "A personal insult, directed at you."

Sign Game, Final Round - 12/29/05
For each sign, guess which one I liked the most when I was making them up while bored at security).

1)	(A) Exploding tire area (B) Olympic torch crossing (C) When throwing rocks at cars, aim for tires (D) Road-popcorn area
2)	(A) Shlong Zone (B) Watch for warm, wilting candles (C) Strongmen bending Inanimate Carbon Rods ahead (D) Sock puppet crossing
3)	(A) Death by cross-bow permitted (B) Beware of fire... made the old-fashioned way (C) Picket fence still in construction (D) Cock-piercing parlor
4)	(A) Perception test: Merging roads or wine bottle? (B) Wigwam settlement (C) Paraplegic stick-people leaning in for a kiss, ahead (D) Look down: knees and feet
5)	(A) Caution: Banana-peel slipping zone (B) Jewish-Mexican yarmulke-hat dance area (C) Doing the Running Man allowed in designated areas only (D) Attach penis here

Another Year - 12/31/05
No lengthy sentimental New Year's recap post... just wishing all you an adventurous 2006.

My resolutions for 2005 centered around starting this tutoring business and getting my writing further along the path from life-hobby to life-hobby-that-I-actually-get-paid-for. The first worked smashingly... the second has definitely made progress. The stage is set for a massive push for a TV sitcom agent, and for now THREE plays all being produced in theatres (LA and Minneapolis) this spring... but now this is turning into a lengthy recap post.

The main theme for 2006 is that resolutions are now longer necessary... I know the big goals I have, and it's just a matter of keeping after them. In the meantime, I'll just keep doing things to spice it up along the way. Like taking the GRE, GMAT, LSAT and Mensa test four days in a row.

Happy NY!

~Paulspondy