Now excuse me, I have to go watch Mean Girls

I love the fact that people write that they “tolerate my obsessions”. I assume that they could care less about my compulsions. And it’s not that I am obsessed with my beloved Lindsay, this is simply a level of devotion quite similar to what Dante had for Beatrice. It’s all meant to inspire a work of great literature as opposed to, say, a restraining order. And anyway, given that I’m the Comptroller for the Lindsay Lohan Liberation Front it’s kind of my job. Trust me, it’s not the easiest group to keep the books clean. I’m still trying to figure out how to properly depreciate three crates of peppermint schnapps.

Of course, the reason for the comment that started the previous rant was my statements on Garth Brooks fans. Remember that I am nothing if not a music snob. I started to dislike Dave Matthews when he became popular and wouldn’t go see Coldplay just because I didn’t want to be surrounded by 20,000 people who knew nothing about music. I’m not sure why I correlate popularity with suckiness but I do. Now, as to Garth I did find out a few things that does put the story a bit more into his favor. First, the only shows that he is doing in 2007 are in KC. That explains the nine night stand but raises the question “Why not tour and why KC?” Apparently being centrally located comes in handy occasionally. Also, they aren’t using the stadium for anything else so might as well fill it with Garth.

And yeah, I can see the point that he puts on a nice show and the tickets are reasonable. It’s just music that I don’t get. I still have a hard time admitting that I listen to country music. It’s why I always use the alt-country label even though that is completely meaningless. I’ve seen Alison Krauss and Lyle Lovett this year and that is country music but I call it something else. I just have an issue with people wearing cowboy hats without irony I guess. It will be a good show but it’s just not my style.

Actually, my biggest issue is that I hang out at a bar a few blocks from the arena and I dread what the parking situation is going to be like. I’ll get a sense of it this weekend when they have the first show (Elton John) going up against a Wilco show down the street. It’s definitely going to be a clash as I’ll be amongst the Gen X hipsters at Wilco while the…while the…who the hell goes to see Elton John anyway? That’s just a show you attend to say that you saw him in concert right? I saw Fats Domino for that reason but at least I knew that was going to be a good performance. Again, I fear the mainstream. If you can sell out a basketball arena you are probably not for me.

Changing Gears Part 1: While watching the weather this weekend I noticed that there is a city named Tightwad, Missouri. First off, I am so going to retire to Tightwad. Second, any guesses as to what their high school mascot is?

Changing Gears Part 2: Sadly I didn’t win the Nobel Prize for Physics this year. Apparently my power plant consisting entirely of drinking birds is too avant garde for the establishment. Dr. Holonyak got screwed over again and he does deserve it one of these years. For those who wonder why I’m still so proud of my electrical engineering background (and the University of Illinois in particular) here is what was done by people in my program historically. John Bardeen (who passed away just before I entered Illinois) won two Nobel Prizes in Physics, one for inventing the transistor and the other for inventing the superconductor. Jack Kilby (who was still a professor emeritus when I was there but I never met) won a Nobel Prize for inventing the integrated circuit, Holonyak invented the LED. While I was there they built Mosaic, the first web browser, in the same building I was taking classes in. So pretty much the greatest inventions of the second half of the twentieth century were made by Illini.

Oh, and we also built HAL. Watch the movie, he’s born in Urbana. That’s how awesome the Illini engineering program is. We were building killer computers 40 years ago.