If you know a single Friends reference, then you've heard of "The List". The one where you're allowed five people (of the famous variety) that you can have sex with and effectively "get out free" with the person you're dating. The rules are that they can't consist of everyday people, and it can't change to cater to a famous person you've just met. In my version of the list, I include a sixth choice, a person of the same sex, because hey, cheating is cheating.

The hard part is getting them to sleep with you.

For many years, my list has been fixed, but after a marathon session of Grey's Anatomy, I've finally decided to make a rather significant change. Gone are two major players with whom my interest was at one time, most deep. Trent Reznor because I know for a fact that he is at least four inches shorter than I am and Angelina Jolie who is just so weird and cliche at this point that I'd rather go back to my first female crush.

1. Vin Diesel
2. Johnny Depp
3. Jason Statham
4. Patrick Dempsey
5. Colin Firth

6. Gina Gershon

P.S. I am half kidding. While I don't want to come off as starstruck or vapid, I'm not exactly going to kick any of these people out of bed should they ever decide to fall in love with me. Anyway, since I did it, now you can totally make one, and put it down here for posterity, so that future spouses and SOs will have proof in writing... you know, just in case.

(McSweeney's Style)

Contemplating writing an epic poem about Sartre, instead of a ten page paper, where I take full advantage of the fact that Sartre rhymes with fart.

Bidding on issues of McSweeney's on eBay that I can't possibly win because I'm not meeting the reserves.

Trying to solo Gnomeregan at level 31.

Organizing my bath products to perfectly mimic the layout of the produce section at my grocery store.

Writing drafts of love letters to David Foster Wallace in crayon on the back of tax forms.

Watching twelve hours of the NFL Draft (almost guaranteed to make studying appealing...almost).

Looking at apartments in San Francisco that I can't afford and pretending to decorate them.

Going to bed four hours earlier than the night before so I can dream about not getting work done (instead of sitting around thinking about it).

I'd never want to be Mike Tyson's publicist, but I find him the most quotable person alive today. Every time he holds a press conference, I know something absolutely delicious is going to come out of his mouth. In honor of his upcoming visit to DC (see #3), I've assembled the list of my all-time favorite things that Tyson has ever said.

10. "There are nine million people who see me in the ring and hate my guts. Most of them are white. That's okay. Just spell my name right."

9. "I'm on the Zoloft to keep from killing y'all."

8. "I really dig Hannibal. Hannibal had real guts. He rode elephants into Cartilage."

7. "My main objective is to be professional but to kill him."

6. “It was a great fight. He’s a great fighter. I take my hand off to him.”

5. [To a female reporter] "It's no doubt I am going to win this fight and I feel confident about winning this fight. I normally don't do interviews with women unless I fornicate with them. So you shouldn't talk anymore... Unless you want to, you know."

4. "I wish that you guys had children so I could kick them in the head or stomp on their testicles so you could feel my pain because that's the pain I have waking up every day."

3. [on his upcoming fight] "I just hope these people of Washington, D.C., are prepared to handle this," Tyson said. "It's going to be a train wreck."

2. "I guess I'm gonna fade into Bolivian."

1. “[He] called me a ‘rapist’ and a ‘recluse.’ I’m not a recluse.”

...and it is Mother by Danzig.

That is all.

Well, given that the change has gone fully underway, I thought I'd make a rather exciting announcement.

My name is Carrie.

P.S. Also, even though I liked the old Sin City banner, I was getting sick of looking at my own face.

Yeah that's right. Finally, after weeks and weeks of accumulating rest XP just so that the last ten levels wouldn't seem so painful, I finally hit level 60 in WoW.

Now what?

I took a break from Lumines for about a week, mostly because everywhere I went I saw little boxes moving around. I even began to draw Lumines scenarios on my notebooks in class. However, I've been doing some writing for a game magazine, and was requested for their upcoming issue to write a short review of Lumines. In my first game back, I broke 100,000 points (my previous cap was around 75,000), and I have not scored under 200,000 since. Once I figured out how to be good at it, it became addictive all over again.

I love this game.

Does anyone know what I'm supposed to do with my 100 or so VHS tapes, when my house is sold two months from now? I'm not packing and taking them with me, because that would be a little ridiculous. I tried looking up VHS on ebay, and there were just hundreds of VHS tapes that wouldn't even sell for $1.

I'm contemplating putting them in a box with a sign that says "TAKE ME!" and just putting them out near one of the local strip malls, but I could use any other suggestions if anyone has them. I'd even be happy to send them to people here as long as you're willing to pay for the shipping itself.

There's this tiny part of me that thinks I should box them up and bury them (my mother is moving to Mexico so I can't just leave them at the 'rents' house) because they might be worth something in about thirty years. But the chances of that being worth the effort it would take, seems a little unlikely.

No matter how I start off rounds of Lumines, they always end the same way, in horrible horrible defeat capped at around 70,000 points. It begins when I reach Level 24 (a.k.a. prettiest level ever), with the crystalline blue and snowy white squares; my eyes begin to take a little visual holiday. I dream of parkas and dogsleds, ocean waves crashing upon smooth white beaches and the seemingly endless blue sky (Rayleigh scattering I tell you!).

The next color change brings me back into the harsh reality of the world, with it's grating red and whites that seem almost inseparable, and the incongruent circular block pattern (Philosophers, the riddle of the square-circle has been resolved!). I do my best to hold myself together, but most of the damage is done during the corneal assault of Level 28.

The final affront is Level 32, which returns to both a familiar block pattern and color scheme, but whose pacing is severely altered. Instead of the frenzy that I have become accustomed to, blocks drop with seemingly endless resistance, and the scrollbar seems to wait for all men as it saunters across the screen.

This 1-2-3 punch has rendered me defenseless, and I have considered taking this game to a Rorschach therapist, so that I might be guided in my counter-attack the next time I play. In the meantime though, I'll contest that the first 70,000 points are some of the best points I've ever had the pleasure of acquiring. I haven't had dreams like these since I figured out how to make the Kremlin fly in 1989.

I actually wrote this for Ninja Gaiden, a year ago, but I touched a pool of water in God of War and started having vivid flashbacks, so I thought I would bring it back out for posterity. I don't know yet if there is an actual swimming level in God of War, but there is WATER and that is ENOUGH.


Swimming levels,
you are pinnacle to every 3D action/adventure game and yet
you are not the apple of mine eye
would that the camera not begin to immediately flip out (and kill people)
it should be easier to see because water is transparent - you dig?
why must the controls reverse and inverse and revert to their very worst?
as if they had not been prepared for you
as if they had only been tested on land

Swimming levels,
what is a man but mostly water
and still he can do nothing but flail about in the very substance that should be most natural to him
You are no typhoon or torrent, just a simple pool of water
but by the way you thwart me, I would not be able to tell the difference

Swimming levels,
who was the great gaming god(dess)
that first set forth the template that read:
HE WHO CREATES LEVEL BASED GAMES SHALL HENCEFORTH MAKE A SWIMMING LEVEL
it's nothing personal but
if I never saw you again
it would mean a great deal
to me.