Last week I didn't leave my house for three days, and during one of those days I didn't talk to a single person. I'm not agoraphobic (if anything I'm bushaphobic); I was actually writing a 7,000 word essay. If you don't know how long that is, just think of a 1,000 word essay, except 7 times longer. I forget what it was about now. I think it was about the quiet sounds made by certain small African primates: lemur murmurs.

50 minutes after I handed in my essay (which marked the end of my spring/summer classes), we went to the wedding of Chadalie. Chadalie is Natalie Daniels (now Abrahamson) and Chad Abrahamson (still Abrahamson). It was a very nice wedding, because they are a very nice couple. At the reception, my digestive system received pickled Jalapeno peppers, Caesar salad, and a Kinder Surprise egg (which tasted a bit like tinfoil and plastic), so that was good; I covered both of the food groups (chocolate and green). Also, our table had a guy with a cowboy hat named Taylor. He was really funny, and--as we later found out--also a breakdancer. Roxanne told a good story during the open mike about how she had prodded (metaphorically, not electrically) the new couple at the very beginning of their relationship. I was happy for Rock because she is sometimes shy (aren't we all?), and everyone thought her story was good. In fact, I think it got the second most laughs, behind the 4-year-old nephew who said: "Uncle Natalie and ... Aunty Chad ... I love ... you!"

Yesterday was also notably sweet: I drank iced tea in a can, watched most of 2 soccer games (including that "holy crap!" goal in the Argentina/Mexico game), played piggyback Bocce ball (not a euphemism), saw Kelly for half an hour (check out a good cougar story of hers), and played badminton (got my bad mint on) until 10:35 at night. OK, that's about it.

And they all lived happy ever after cut to credits.

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I’ve finally decided on the fairest way to choose which team I will cheer for at the World Cup: victory dances. I don’t think anyone will be able to beat 6’7 Peter Crouch doing the robot. He’s the only person in the world who is lankier than Chuck. He’s World Cup-level lanky. Therefore I must cheer for England.

Seriously though, the World Cup is brilliant. Or so I might say if I was British, after which I would say: “Top drawer old boy! Stiff upper lip and all that,” because that’s the ending to every sentence spoken by a British person. I don’t even know what any of that means. Oh well, what matters is that the World Cup is the most popular and most important international sporting event in the world, aside from dwarf tossing.

Among countries that don’t do the robot, I’m of two or three minds about which I should cheer for. Sometimes I want a tiny, poor country like Togo or Cote D’Ivoire to win. But other times—bearing utilitarianism in mind—I think it would be better for a very populous country (like Mexico) to win, because then more people would be happy overall. Unfortunately, the most populous country represented at the World Cup is the U.S., and no one wants them to win, not even Americans—most of whom don’t even know what the World Cup is. The second most populous state at the World Cup is Brazil. And it is really hard not to cheer for them; their style of the play is the reason it is called the beautiful game. Plus they have Ronaldinho, who is a spectacularly graceful and athletic freak of nature. He's like a kung-fu gazelle on steroids with an overgelled ponytail (do ponytails really need gelling? They do if you're the best soccer player in the world). But Brazil has won 5 times, so I can’t really cheer for them. So, I don’t really know who to cheer for. I guess I’ll just make it up on a case-by-case basis. I should be fine as long as I cheer for someone, everyone, or no one.

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Oh yeah, I also spent time with humans recently. The birthday was fun to the max . I rocked the crap out of everyone at croquet. Also, I ate a hamburger AND a chicken burger: yeah! And I had a cake with a stegosaurus and a some kind of generic Allosaurus/T-Rex type dinosaur on it: double yeah! And Ben Johnson made me laugh really hard when he recited the part from The Office about Bruce Lee and enter the dragon (me and no one else). And Andrew Ferrence also made me laugh when he did the "Lazy Sunday Rap" from SNL: "Let's hit up yahoo maps to find the dopest route. I prefer mapquest! that's a good one too.googlemaps is the best! true that! double true!"

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I've been making a lot of new friends recently, mostly fish and shrimp. This picture is a banded coral shrimp, or as I like to call him: funny lobster thing. He's basically just a bundle of antennae and pinchy arms. That's what I look for in a friend. He lives in the secret aquarium that is located on the 3rd floor of the biology building. There are also 5 Finding Nemos (formerly known as clown fish); a needly fish; about 30 hermit crabs that have slow-motion demolition derbys; a big purple fish that I call the police fish; and a crazy fish/lizard that bites rocks all day long. The aquarium is neat because it has a day/night cycle (the day is during the day, and the night...I don't know when the night is).

Oh yeah, and my prediction for the World Cup winner is: Togo! Why? Do I really need a why? I mean, it's Togo!

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In my Chucklike (Charlesesque?) absence, I have forgotten how to post posts. I started writing "Hello wayward souls" but who says things like that? Seriously. Not me. I do know that you are a wayward soul though. I know this because, first: you are on the internet; second: you are reading the pinnacle of nonsense that is this blog; third: you are in a ward, probably mental; fourth: when describing you, people say: "in a word: probably mental"; fifth: there is no fifth.

Right, so, the cause of my absence was the absence of my life. Meaning, not much is going on (although a lot of things are not going on). One thing that is not not going on today, is my shirt. My shirt is definitely going on. That is, it has it going on, because it is a blue and white Hawaiian shirt. And going-on-ness is a unique and inextricable property of Hawaiian shirts. Holy crap, what am I even talking about? Sorry, my brain is being rushed; I have a class in 15 mints. Well, it's actually about 15 mints, meaning the length of the class is the amount of the time it takes to suck 15 mints. The class doesn't start for 28 minutes though (which is about 4 mints from now).

Riiiiight, so, yeah, I haven't posted much lately because mostly my life is just school and hanging out with Roxamily (collective noun: Roxanne and family). Mr. Cooper is sometimes there too ("Yo Coop, what's up!"). And nothing remarkably blogworthy (hahaha, I know) has been happening in either of those faucets of my life.

On Saturnday we are going to have birthday-related out hanging, and it will involve hamburgers and croquet. In other words, it will be the pinnacle of existence (warning! you have exceeding your quota for use of the word pinnacle, any further uses will be punished by an angry librarian or webmaster of some kind, neither of whom will be wearing a Hawaiian shirt). Yeah, so, that should be fun as people I don't often get to see (I don't often get to sea) will be coming.

Oh yeah, on the academia (nuts!) front I scored a major victory in my ongoing struggle to annoy my unflapple psychology teacher today. My crushingly annoying logic compelled him to change one of the answers on my latest quiz from wrong to right. Who really cares about gpa? The important thing is how much you can vex your teachers into raising your mark.

Geek: 1
Professional geek: 0

P.S. Careful readers might remember that he actually has 1 point too, not 0 points, since the last argument I had with him ended in agree to disagree (i.e., no mark for me). But the splendidly dramatic cliff-hanger effect would have been killed if I had written that the scores were equal.

P.P.S. Neither the P.S. nor this P.P.S. have ruined the splendidly dramatic cliff-hanger effect.

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