Thanks (and, because it's slowed my productivity to a crawl, no thanks!) to Christy for introducing me to Nerdfighters. What is Nerdfighters? I'm so glad you asked.

It started as a project back in 2007 wherein two brothers (Hank and John Green) decided to forgo communicating via any kind of textual contact (email, IM, etc) and instead sent each other only video blogs every other day. Of course there were challenges, assignments, rules, and punishments for rules broken, making the videos more entertaining than if say, all they did was talk about episodes of Law & Order that they had watched the night before.

But then, after John found a videogame named Nerdfighters in an airport, they started using the term as a name for themselves and people like them. Nerdfighters. Nerds who do good things and fight for what's right. And also help with the charity they subsequently created, the Foundation to Decrease WorldSuck.

Anyway, I'm proud to report that the other night I finally joined the Nerdfighters social network. Now, I too am fighting against worldsuck, and fighting for awesome. If you'd care to join me against the fight in worldsuck, why not become my friend on Nerdfighters here. What'll it hurt?

The other night, while out drinking, Jessica begins critiquing the presidents as we're putting down money to pay for our drinks.

"Jackson is just so ugly," she says, sneering at the bill. "He's not ugly," I rebut, but Jessica looks at me disapprovingly and says, "Oh, he's ugly." "But look at that hair," I say. "And that was before they had any product." She tilts her head from side to side, not agreeing but not denying. Then she sets a five next to the twenty.

At this I offer: "At least Jackson is better looking than Lincoln." Jessica shakes her head. "No way, man. Lincoln is hot. And besides, he was all "To hell with slavery!" and went out getting shot down like a gangsta!"

"Like a gangsta?" I ask. Jessica nods. "You mean like Tupac?" I ask. She nods again. "Exactly. That's why all the ladies love him."

Terms most people know:

- A flock of seaguls
- A gaggle of geese
- A ballet of swans

Terms some people know:

- A flamboyance of flamingos
- A murder of crows
- A peep of chickens

Terms no one knows:

- A brace of grouse
- A trembling of finches
- A piteousness of doves

Terms I completely made up a yesterday (but could probably fool some people):

- A handbag of hummingbirds
- A carafe of sparrows
- A mailbox of quail
- A sit-com of owls

Album titles I would consider if I was in a mopey indie band and we wanted to give our album the title of a proverb with a wry and ironic twist:

"Abstinence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder"
"Strike While the Irony is Hot"
"Fight Dire With Dire"
"Better Waif Than Sorry"
"Look Before You Weep"
"Every Blog Has It's Day"

Things I would ideally be doing when I run into an ex:

- Talking to a model at a party
- Winning the Nobel Prize
- Saving a dog and/or baby from a burning building
- Having David Bowie tell me he thinks I'm cool

Things I have actually been doing when I've run into an ex:

- Seeing how much BubbleTape I can fit into my mouth at once while walking down the sidewalk, causing myself to gag and slightly drool
- Trying out a new facial hair style that makes me look like a pirate
- Pretending my glasses had fogged up and I couldn't see them
- Buying a bedskirt at Bed Bath & Beyond

Last night my Facebook news feed alerted me to this:

Top Music in the Chicago, IL network
1. R&b
2. Rap
3. Rock
4. Hip Hop
5. Coldplay

Really?

The other day Christine and I were at a coffee shop, sitting across from each other and doing "work". Several people walked in that we needed to make comments about, but we didn't want to be rude. So we went on Gmail chat.

bergwithfries: See, this is what it would be like to be deaf and speak sign language. You could talk about people right in front of them without them knowing.
c.stiller: So true. Also, like, if we spoke Portuguese.
bergwithfries: Yeah. That seems like it'd be a lot of work though.

Either way I suppose it'd be more work than I'm willing to exert just to talk about someone behind their back.

The other day I received a Facebook invite to a friend's law school graduation party. It dawned on me, as I sat in a coffee shop on my laptop, looking up 80's sit-coms on Wikipedia, that I had turned out very different than my friend who is the same age as I, is married, and is graduating law school.

To pinpoint where we may have strayed I Wikipediaed our respective high schools, trying to gain some perspective.

Who graduated from his high school, Benet Academy?

- Joan Biskupic, a USA Today Supreme Court correspondent, PBS Washington Week guest, and author: Sandra Day O'Connor: How the First Woman on the Supreme Court Became Its Most Influential Justice.

- Patrick Collins, a former Assistant United States Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois: lead prosecutor in Operation Safe Road licenses-for-bribes investigation, which led to the conviction of 75 people including Illinois Governor George Ryan.

- Robert Conrad, a Clemson hall of fame basketball star and Rhodes Scholar candidate who lead the United States Department of Justice's Campaign Finance Task Force (2000-01), which examined, under oath, the President and Vice President of the United States.

- Mark Kirasich, a Deputy Director of NASA's Project Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle, the new lunar vehicle for human spaceflight.

- Mark Obmascik, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist from the Denver Post: lead writer in the paper's coverage of the Columbine High School massacre, which won the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Reporting.

- Peter Petre, Sr., author of : Executive Editor at Large of Fortune magazine; co-author of Norman Schwarzkop's It Doesn't Take a Hero; commissioned to write Alan Greenspan's memoirs.

And who graduated from my high school, Wheaton North?

- Gail O'Grady, the actress who was on NYPD Blue and Boston Legal.

Suddenly it's all making sense.

The other day I was hanging out with James at the comic book store he works at, doing "research" for an article. Under a shelf of comics I notice several boxes of old books. One section is full of Jimmy Olsen comics from the 50's and 60's.

"How did Jimmy Olsen get his own series of books?" I ask James. "Superman was a really huge deal back then," James says. "They gave all the supporting characters their own books to capitalize on the success. Jimmy, Lois, all of them."

"Did Perry White ever have his own series?" I ask. "Because that I would read." James laughs and tells me no, Perry White didn't have his own series. "But I think there was a general Daily Bugle series that he was in a lot."

"Daily Bugle?" I ask. "Isn't that Spiderman, not Superman?"

"Ahhh!" James smiles at me. "Geek test!"

Readers, I have a confession:

This morning I blogged for someone else. It's not something I'm proud of, and I was thinking of you guys the whole time, I swear.

But if you want to head over to UR Chicago (there's a link posted to the left, as usual, or for those of you who won't be reading this until weeks from now, click here for the direct link), you can read my little shpiel about why people should be more careful running along the lake. (Hint: If you're not, you could die!)

Back in high school I became friends with Nik, and one of our first real "just her and I" things occured when I asked her to a dance at school. For whatever reason (I really can't understand it now) the theme of the dance encouraged us to dress like famous couples (perhaps we were ripping off that Drew Barrymore movie where she goes back to high school undercover?), and for some reason Nik and I thought it would be a good idea to go as a couple that had just woken up and were still wearing their pajamas. Hilarious high school hijinx!

Well, here and now, many moons later, I'm still calling Nik up in desperation, asking her to be my +1 for things. On Saturday night I was invited to a party throw by the wonderful owners of Lovely: A Bake Shop, and Nik came along with me.

Below, enjoy photo proof of all of this, from high schoolers at a dance in pajamas, to respectable adults who have probably had too much to drink.

p.s. My hair in the high school pic is purposely trying to look like crazy bed head. Even if that were the "style" at the time, how could I have not known how ridiculous that looked. I mean, c'mon!

Things I was thinking about blogging on today, but ultimately decided not to:

- How I've added some new people to the Fellow Bloggers section on the left sidebar (it could be you!).

- A New York Times article in which pediatrician and author Dr. Karp asserts, "Toddlers are not just small people. In fact, for all practical purposes, they're not even small Homo sapiens." Is this man calling babies little monkeys? Or, even worse, some other type of little animal?

- A new book I started last night called Twinkies, Deconstructed.

- Why I should care about socialists, facists, or anarchist pigs. It still wouldn't change the fact that I don't have a car.

The other day I came across a picture of a trashcan from Seattle (featured left), with writing on it in English, Chinese, Vietnamese, and Spanish.

Confused, I emailed good ol' Librarian Girl, who is not only a genius and knows all, but also happens to live in the fine city of Seattle.

LG wrote back:

"Yep, there is a really large Asian population here - in fact, the majority population here (besides white) is Asian, with that group being made up of mostly Chinese, Vietnamese, and Filipino, and that doesn't count the people who don't live here permanently but are here for business and tourism, which is a lot too. There are so many booming immigrant groups here though, and some groups may not have the most numbers right now but they are growing at faster rates- like Russian immigrants for example. So like at the library where I work, for instance, we have collections in four major areas besides English: Spanish, Vietnamese, Chinese, and Russian. We are also going to be expanding into Amharic, as we have a booming East African population too, although finding publishers in that language that distribute in the US is really hard.

That's not to say that every public sign is in all of these languages-- it depends where you are. Like, at the airport, all of the directional signs are pretty much in English, but when you get on the people-mover-train thingy, the stops and the "please hold the handrail" announcements are in English, Spanish, Chinese and Japanese.

It's a big challenge for our graphic design department at our library, I know - how do you design something with a gajillion languages of text on it?

Wow, who knew I would go on and on about a picture of a trash can? I swear I can babble about anything."

You learn something new every day.

This morning Kristine was asking me about the word appendix. "The organ or the addition to a paper?" I ask. "Addition to a paper," she clarifies.

We talk about how appendix can also be a verb. "To appendix something," I state. I then go off on a mini-rant about how almost anything can be turned into a verb. "Shoe. Sandwich. Green. They can all be turned into verbs."

"That's what I love about the English language," Kristine says. "It's very flexible."

I nod in agreement and stretch my arms over my head. "The English language is like a woman who has been doing yoga for years."

I may have stumbled upon one of the greatest videos of all time (surprisingly not on YouTube).

Once you get past the "eh" opening theme, the movie is genius. Pure genius!

See more work at redheadedleague.com.

The other day I read a survey by internet ad outfit Mindset Media of 7,500 computer users, showing results that Mac users are generally more self-assured and less modest than PC users. They're also more apt to be creative, perfectionist, and liberal in social mores and politics.

So basically it's proving what I've known for years (but had no proof of): Mac users are just better.

Possible nicknames that famous writers could have been given in middle school:

F. Scott Fitzgerald - Fitzy
Ernest Hemingway - Big Ern
Gore Vidal - Blood n' Gore
Norman Mailer - Postman
John Updike - John "makes me wanna" Updike
John Steinbeck - Pussy

Lately I can't get the Chiquita Banana song out of my head.

I'll be washing dishes...

I'm a Chiquita Banana and I've come to say: Banana's have to ripen in a certain way!

I'll be in the shower and sing out loud...

When they're fleck'd with brown and have a golden hue, bananas taste the best and are the best for you!

While walking down the street I'll hum...

You can put them in a salad! You can put them in a pie - aye! aye!

In my elevator I'll absentmindedly whisper...

Any way you want to eat them, it's impossible to beat them!

While be tying my shoes and blurt out...

But bananas like the climate of the very, very tropical equator. So you should never put bananas in the refrigerator!

Maybe I need professional help.

Yesterday Bernadette and I did our civic duty and voted in the Illinois Primary.

I turned in my ballot and the man running the ballot scanning machine handed me one of those slips of paper that read "THANK YOU FOR VOTING!"

Bern followed right behind me, putting her ballot into the scanning machine. "You're gonna wanna hold on to this," the man told Bern as he handed her the thank you slip. He then turned the slip over, showing a phone number. "And you're definitely gonna want to hang on to this."

"Is giving out your phone number in a polling place legal?" Bern asked me as we walked out. "I feel like the electoral college has got to have some kind of laws against it," I said.

The other day I called Byron to see what he was up to.

"I'm going through boxes and cleansing my present of my past," he says. "That sounds very Oprah, doesn't it?"

I agree that it does. Then, to sound more Oprah: "Maybe you should take your soul out to lunch, too."

Byron thinks this is a stellar idea.

"And then buy your soul a scarf," I add.

"Perhaps take my soul to a day spa," Byron say. "Get it a facial."

Oprah would be proud.

Yesterday, walking down Broadway, I notice a woman in her late twenties playfully jumping and stomping in a snowbank. She stomps a few steps, stops to look at the sole of her boot, and then continues on. I watch for a minute in confusion until she looks up and sees me staring.

She blushes and shyly admits, "I just moved here from Texas last week."

I shrug my shoulders and nod. "That's cool."

While the rest of the city is complaining about the snow, this woman is loving every minute of it.

Last night I attended an Equality Illinois gala downtown, honoring people who have made great strides in helping and advancing the causes of the GLBT community.

Before the ceremony started, while waiting in line to get a drink, I heard one man saying, "It's not a crime to deny two men the right to marry. What's a crime is that two men don't get the chance to have a wedding registry!"

At least they have a sense of humor about being denied their basic rights.

Famous film titles that have been translated into Portuguese and then translated back into English (which I completed with the help of Babelfish).

- It dribbles: Pig in the city
- One flied on the nest of the cuckoo
- 2001: A Odyssey Of The Space
- Dr. Strangelove or: As I learned to stop of if worrying and loving the bomb
- Butch small Cassidy and of Sundance
- It closes the meeting of the third type
- Assumption that has the coming to the supper
- Mr. of rings: Fellowship of the ring
- Who Has Distrustful Of Virginia Woolf?

Found on the ground in an alley off Roscoe the other day, written on a yellow Post-It:

"We officially have the brightest bathroom in Chicago! I was going to buy them tomorrow; let me know what you'd like me to get instead."

Thoughts on what they're talking about?