How am I doing?

Read this, all the way through.

Then watch this, all the way through.



You'll get a pretty accurate picture of my current state.

Oh, Nebraska

My home state doesn't make the national news very often. We Nebraskans tend to be staid, good-natured but somewhat vanilla folk. That unremarkable nature can be annoying. When my old junior high was evacuated in 1998 because of a foul, unknown odor, several national news reports gave the city as Grand Island, New York. (Thankfully, when a stray accordion case caused a similar evacuation earlier this year, there was no such confusion.)

When Nebraska does make the news, though, it tends to be entertaining. Take for example the story that broke this week of state Sen. Bill Kintner being asked to resign over allegedly having an explicit sex video starring himself on his state computer. Kintner, of Papillion, is a Tea Party-backed politician with a track record of deriding gays, women, minorities, and the poor. From Joe My God:

Kintner has loudly opposed same-sex marriage, gay adoption, and transgender rights. He has also publicly declared that Christians should let gays know their business isn’t wanted by providing them with bad service.

The good senator appears to have a keen eye for other people's splinters. Pity he can't turn that hawk-like gaze on his own actions.

As I said, Nebraska rarely makes the headlines, but I've managed to compile a fun, if modest, set of stories over the past year or two. Some of my favorites are below the fold.

The Germans are coming....

And this time they're... nice?

A pause that refreshes

You might have noticed a slowdown in posting here. The summer semester -- in which we cram 13 weeks of material into eight weeks -- is every bit as hectic as I feared. I'm never taking a language course in the summer again if I can help it.

In the meantime, here's three Ireland fans singing in a French train station. Enjoy. (HT Chris Jones)

For those about to Crock, we salute you

Sometimes it's the little things that make you feel at home. Maybe it's peanut butter, or finding your favorite TV show from home on a local channel. Or maybe it's finding a particular kitchen appliance of which you are particularly fond.

But all the cool kids are doing it!

Oh, go on. You know you want to.

You are a fluke of the universe

And whether you can hear it or, the universe is laughing behind your back.

I'm toleratin' it

I try not to make a habit of eating at American chain restaurants while I'm overseas. It can get expensive, the quality isn't always great, and more often than not there's a local place that is just as good, if not better.

That said, sometimes nothing else will do. This weekend was one of those times. I'd just finished a walk through the Meiji Shrine grounds and was in the mood for something quick and unhealthy. Unbeknownst to me, though, the Burger King and KFC near my closest train stop are undergoing renovations and will be closed for two weeks.

That just left the old standby, McDonald's, a couple blocks away. As it turned out, it was quite the opportune time to grace the Golden Arches.

Those wacky Norwegians

Enjoying winter? Not as much as this guy.

Stop me if you've heard this one...

...but New Year's resolutions are bunk. What, other than the turning of the calendar and the end of the holiday season, makes this a better time than any other to undertake self-improvement?

Then there's the resolutions themselves. For all the fuss about making them, it seems it's taken as a fait accompli that they will come up short, as though a New Year's resolution carries all the weight of your average political campaign promise.

Given all this, Mark Twain perhaps best summed up the occasion in his 1863 New Year's Day editorial in the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise:

Now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions. Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual. Yesterday, everybody smoked his last cigar, took his last drink, and swore his last oath. To-day, we are a pious and exemplary community. Thirty days from now, we shall have cast our reformation to the winds and gone to cutting our ancient short comings considerably shorter than ever. We shall also reflect pleasantly upon how we did the same old thing last year about this time. However, go in, community. New Year's is a harmless annual institution, of no particular use to anybody save as a scapegoat for promiscuous drunks, and friendly calls, and humbug resolutions, and we wish you to enjoy it with a looseness suited to the greatness of the occasion.

Happy 2016 to everyone. If you're not already living the life you want to live, here's hoping this is the year you start.

A holiday playlist for the rest of us

It's Christmas again, that time of year when the shmaltz is turned up to 11 and songs dripping with seasonal sentiment are as difficult to escape as marketing for the new Star Wars movie. If, like me, sentimentality isn't your strong suit, here's a playlist to help get you through the last day of the Christmas season and keep you safe until Halloween 2016, when the drumbeat from the North Pole begins anew.

Happy hunting

Ghosts? Goblins? Vampires? Bah. If you want to fear something this Halloween season, fear the animal revolution. Animals exist, unlike those first three, and they're tired of all this human nonsense.

Local TV news at its finest

Who says bowling isn't a contact sport?

I sound like An Old

I am a fairly private person. Yes, I make the occasional appearance on social media or podcasts, but for the most part I don't enjoy putting myself out there. I don't particularly like talking about myself, and pictures of me on the internet are hard to find.

This is by design. I enjoy my solitude, and this whole internet culture of documenting everything with one's smartphone and immediately uploading it to Twitter, Instagram and Facebook just leaves me cold. Human memory is fallible, I know, but is the ability to watch a video you'll probably forget about days after the fact worth seeing some of the most enjoyable moments of your life through a viewfinder rather than your own eyes?

This is how you do a political ad BETTER

No celebrity endorsements, no Steve Martin or Joss Whedon pushing their preferred candidates.

Just one Canadian man, a dream -- and a green screen.

BEHOLD.



Canada gets this guy, and Americans have to settle for Donald Trump? There's no justice, I tells ya.

Doing my part for cultural awareness

It's Ramadan here in the UAE, which means observant Muslims refrain from doing anything enjoyable during daylight hours and the rest of us pretend like that's something resembling a good idea. But still, I feel like I need to do my part. That's why I have taken it upon myself to help make this country just a little more pious by alleviating it of those nasty, sinful pork products and stashing them where no one would think to look -- in my belly.

(Actually, given the size of my belly, that might be one of the first places they look.)

After the rousing success of my curry rice recipe, I thought I'd share with everyone my take on Filipino spaghetti. It's taken a few iterations to settle, but I think I've hit upon a good formula. You should be able to find most of the ingredients fairly easily, and those that are more specialized can be substituted without losing much in the way of flavor.

Do you even sports, bro?

So it finally happened. Brian Brushwood, friend of the family and all-around good egg, has finally cut a commercial that speaks to me, Sports Guy.

Well played, Brian.

Dad joke or kid joke?

You decide. (HT PZ Myers).

Right place, right time

Works in sports journalism long enough and things do start to look and sound samey. The same old events come around every year or few years, athletes say the same old things, and even the controversies become old hat – most likely because they stem from the same underlying conditions or the same old main players.

Even the photos – one of the sports section's great advantages over other sections (hi, business friends!) – start to look the same after a while. So many variations on "Player X vies for the ball with Player Y", "Victorious Player celebrates triumph", "Losing Player wallows in dejection" and "High School Senior bursts into tears at the end of their athletic career". They're still good shots, of course, and are a boon to the section. It just takes a little something extra to make you go "ooh".

So when that something extra comes along, it's good to celebrate it.

Russian Navy Seals

Does what it says on the tin.