Congratulations go to Adam “Zimmy” Zimmerman, the grand prize winner of this year’s first-ever Blue Pyramid University Quiz March Madness Challenge. Zimmy wins an Amazon gift certificate and the adulation of hoops bracketeers everywhere.

Zim-Zim the Mayonnaise Man

News of a new set of brackets, namely that involving APDA’s 2010 National Championship if it were a 64-team single-elimination tournament, is forthcoming sometime early tomorrow.

It’s not exactly people bringing down the statue of Saddam Hussein, but this kind of image is being levied to the American people as a sign of the grand liberation they’re bringing to a backwards and otherwise hopeless land in “the good war.”

But let’s let this picture speak for itself a little, shall we?

First off, we have a major offensive into a town/city that’s been described as ranging from a population of anywhere from 50,000 to 125,000 people. Presumably this is the town square, a patch of green field that may be what fallow poppies look like. If you’re going to have a ceremony for a city this size, it’s safe to say you’d pick a place reflective of the grandness of the city itself. This is a place that makes abandoned pueblos in New Mexico look like thriving modern metropolises.

Where are they hiding all those people?

If you look up Marja, you’ll find a hastily assembled Wikipedia article with no images and a discussion of the 2010 offensive, a vague 1950’s reference, and the latitude/longitude coordinates of 31°31′N 64°07′E. Plug those coordinates into Google Maps and you get an image of a dirt triangle in the middle of green fields like the one in the image above, revealing enough housing for at least 5,000 people scattered over an area the size of a small county. Where did all those people go?

Scroll around a bit and you’ll find an actual city, Laskar Gah, in the northeast of the region. But this is not the city of the offensive, not the site of the resistance, not the area in dispute. South of that is an actual fortress, the ancient stronghold of Qala Bist with its famous arch and corresponding inspirations.

This is not being billed as the war for Laskar Gah, though. It’s a war for poppy fields, like those depicted in our ceremonial flag-raising above. Look at all the guards on each side of the tiny ceremony. Surely they have to guard a formal ceremony in a land known for suicide bombings, right? This makes sense. But, uh, why are they facing toward the crowd rather than away from it? How does that make sense? They’re not guarding against a marauding individual who comes careening in to spoil the party, but rather preparing to gun down anyone in the dense packed crowd who makes a false move.

Which, frankly, doesn’t make any sense either. After all, with the crowd this closely packed, you couldn’t even see into the middle of the crowd. And that’s where a clever suicide bomber would be. With this density and proximity, they’d probably be able to wipe out the whole thing with one explosive. The fact that this didn’t happen indicates there was probably quite a perimeter and possible strip-search at the gates of this gathering. Which makes sense, but then why the inward-pointing guards?

The message of this picture seems clear to me. There just aren’t that many people in Marja, at least not that many who want to be associated with the ancient flag. The flag is fringed with gold, tinged with the blood of civilians who died for an uncertain future, liberated from their lives made miserable by the same invaders who ended it all. Is it any wonder you can’t get more people to come to this party?

There may not be stars and stripes on this flag, but there are wreaths of wheat. The flag waves over the amber waves of grain in the distance, planted to cover up the opium, cover up the still warm bodies of the dead. What if they threw a flag-raising and nobody came?

I didn’t think I’d make it to thirty. For a long time, I felt fairly confident about that. Over the weekend, I proved myself wrong. And I’m pretty happy about that.

Since the Princeton tournament ran till 1:30 in the morning on my birthday proper, we ended up putting up some of my Rutgers team that had planned on going back to New Brunswick when the trains were still running. Em tipped them off that the day was significant, so after the tournament they went out and got cupcakes, a book I’d been meaning to read, and two hats, including my first-ever beret and a wool bear hat which is truly amazing and fits neatly in my collection of somewhat ridiculous headgear.

Em and I went out to dinner at the infamous Tortuga’s that night, I got a migraine, and was actually asleep at 2:56 AM Eastern on the 21st, the moment (11:56 PM Pacific on the 20th) that I turned 30. Would not have predicted that.

The next day, Em had said there would be a small gathering of people, but totally misrepresented the size and schedule, creating a pretty hefty surprise party that started at Chipotle! It went on to bowling, wherein I notched a 198 high game after bowling a so-so 443 series. We had time for so many games because the entire party save four people (Fish, Beth, Em, and I) ditched after just one game of bowling. It was still great that so many people came out though.

Here are some obligatory pictorial depictions of the event:

30’s a big number:

Cake!

How did I get to be so old?

Resisting the temptation to faceplant…

A lot of people came from Philadelphia and Jersey:

The opening frame. Note the lack of pins in the lane!

55% of our lives and counting:

I’ll have something about the deeper reflections of what it’s like to actually be thirty sometime later. It feels remarkably different, remarkably weird. As I’ve stated frequently, I’m really glad I finished American Dream On to ward off feelings of failure and insignificance that are still wafting in a bit. Today, I also maintained a February/March tradition by creating a mix CD, my first since last March. Entitled “Triple Threat”, it mixes themes of three decades, the state of the world, and creativity. Like being thirty itself, I’m not entirely sure what I think of it yet.

Yesterday was one of the best days in a good long while. It snowed all day, with total fall probably somewhere over a foot, tacked onto the 4-6 unmelted inches from the storm over the weekend. I came in and out of the house as often as I dared under a strict rubric of refusing to get sick for a third time this winter. I’ve finally figured out how to stay suited up sufficiently and when I have to come in. I think. I’m not feeling 100%, but I’m certainly not sick either.

Anyway, for those who prefer things visually, here are ten more takes on the day that was…

When Em got up and I told her class was cancelled, we decided to make an impromptu breakfast that wasn’t cereal:

Back to work on the fort:

Roof!:

Emily made a snow-person. For reasons that remain opaque, she dubbed her “Fraulein Francesca”:

The snow was really coming down:

Expansion:

Almost a containing cave:

This was actually us both in the snow fort:

Substantial wall additions:

The beginnings of a tower, with a window on the side:

Epilogue: When I went out this morning, the new window-wall side had collapsed, mostly because of the weakness of the window. I worked on rebuilding it for about an hour. When I just looked out the window about five minutes ago, I saw that the entire roof has caved in, leaving just some walls. So it goes.

We are living right now under a swirling Nor’easter that reminds me why Emily was able to convince me to move back to the East Coast. My love for snow simply can’t be underestimated. Really can’t. I am just walking around in a state of euphoric bliss as the precipitation accumulates. It even figured heavily in the short story I wrote last night, the second in a week.

Here’s ten quick pictures to get you started on the storm of last weekend and the much bigger storm underway now…

On Saturday, it snowed!:

I finally made good use of our fancy new scraper thing:

We made a plan to meet some friends in the afternoon and play in the snow. I immediately set to work on a snow fort that wound up looking a little mazey:

Emily made a snow angel, her first ever:

Obligatory artistic shot:

When we got home and a day or so had passed, I missed my snow fort. So I started another one in our yard, with a much smaller footprint, but aspirations for greater height:

This morning, as dawn broke, it was deja vu all over again:

This tree is right in front of our house:

I had worked on the fort last night as it started snowing again… there’s some real potential brewing here:

The Prius was ready this time. If by “ready” we mean “prepared to look silly”:

Back when I had a really popular website, I used to get e-mails almost constantly, e-mails that criticized or questioned certain decisions I would make in my quizzes. The epicenter of this feedback crystallized into three key critiques which I summarized as the top three Frequently Asked Quiztions.

But today I got a new one – totally unprecedented. Something that almost reminds me of my meeting-people gimmick of challenging them to come up with an original play on my name as they’re digesting its similarity to a word they use daily. It is presumably from someone in China… while the e-mail address is inconclusive, the hold on English and the sentiments expressed are not:

date Sat, Jan 30, 2010 at 10:21 AM
subject what’s problem with your quiz?

To whom it may concern,

Today I took a “what country are you” quiz on your web and it says I’m the country Taiwan… Huh?? when did Taiwan become a C-O-U-N-T-R-Y???!!!! WTF with your web????

Taiwan has always been a part of territory of China!!

Taiwan is only a province of China!!!

Don’t ever forget this!!!

SHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAME ON YOU :-(

If only they’d used a couple more exclamation points, I might really never forget this. Although I highly doubt they expected me to record the verbatim transcript of their e-mail. Here’s your shot at immortality, friend.

The Internet is so liberating.

Speaking of the Internet, the big meme going around Facebook is to find your “celebrity doppelganger” and make said person your profile picture. I am hardly so cavalier about said picture, but I was reading the best article about David Foster Wallace since his death the other night, so I figure he might have to do:

Of course, that may just be the most authentic celebrity who looks like me, or the person I’d most like to be compared to. After all, we all know that reality shows have produced the people who really look the most like me:

No matter how much long brown hair they grow, though, none of these people ever seem quite as thin as I am. Ah well.

Today I was reminded why I came to the East Coast. Sure, I may have written 3 chapters in the last 24 hours and be capping the officially most productive writing period of my entire life (the amount written here has surpassed the entire length of Loosely Based in a slightly shorter timeframe), but this is what I really came for…

Snow!: the view from our porch.

Watching snow makes me happy:

Who needs a Christmas tree?

Starting to stick…

Starting to accumulate…

Pandora is unimpressed:

The world transformed:

So, there’s this thing called Wordle that I just discovered on Facebook, which allows you to analyze any piece of writing or webpage for commonly occurring words. Then it spits out something like this:

Pretty neat stuff. My big complaint is that it doesn’t draw on the whole history of the blog, but only the very recent history, which is why this thing reads mostly like a schizophrenic recap of my last substantive post.

I am wholly torn between my temptation to plug in the entirety of American Dream On and the concern that it would somehow find a way to capture it or just fail to function under the weight of 76,000+ words.

Maybe trying Loosely Based would be a good compromise…

Part 16 in a 16-part stately series pictorially documenting the Sojourn.

Thursday: Pennsylvania

We missed the entry sign for Jersey amidst construction. However, this is almost as good – the other half of the sign (not pictured) says The World Takes:

Our crooked rusty corner sign:

The Prius made it in good shape:

Tiny House!

Inside Tiny House – it’s tiny:

I had not intended to grow facial hair on the trip, but my razor broke on the second day. This is thus a follicle chronicle of our journey:

Em was tired, but had time to come up with the brilliant idea of pool floats as mattresses while we waited for our stuff (and did a puzzle):

That’s it for the Summer Sojourn – hope you’ve enjoyed this pictorial odyssey. Next up will probably be some rendition of the India & Nepal 2008 Trip, which I was doing a decent job of posting about right after it ended, then was unable to keep up during new day job obligations at Glide. The daily content/series thing is fun, though I wonder how relevant it will feel almost two years after that trip. That, at least, has words and pictures together, since I kept an extensive journal on that trip (which didn’t exactly materialize in this year’s domestic venture).

Part 15 in a 16-part stately series pictorially documenting the Sojourn.

Tuesday: Ohio

I think this highlights the problem with putting gubernatorial names on state entry signs:

PNC Park!

We had amazing seats – the closest I’ve ever been to a major league field – for not much dough… I guess it helps to set a record for consecutive losing seasons:

Pirate!

The Pirates may be the only major league team with two mascots. Some teams don’t even have one:

Cool out-of-town-scoreboard with game situations:

Tony LaRussa!

The Duquesne Incline – the best little city attraction you’ve never heard of:

First one comes up in the red incline car:

Then looks at the amazing view from the top:

Then starts on the descent:

View from the bottom after going up and back:

Next up in Pittsburgh, the Carnegie:

This picture fails to capture the epic size of the diplodocus pictured:

Storey with stego:

Em with triceratops:

Em contemplates what it would be like to encounter this giant sea turtle in the wild:

Return to the fabled cafeteria at Dickinson College – it hasn’t changed a bit:

The emergency exit door I shattered with a baseball at CTY and had to pay to replace:

Hershey’s Chocolate World, where I asked to Em’s embarrassment why they didn’t have M&M cookies:

The highlights of the tour are these singing animatronic cows, espousing the virtues of MILK! chocolate:

The real factory (no admittance):

Philly at night:

Waffle House in NE PA:

World’s largest crayon or fake plastic filler?

Cozy day of reading in Ariel & Mike’s new place:

And last: New Jersey

Part 14 in a 16-part stately series pictorially documenting the Sojourn.

Sunday: Michigan

The only Lt. Governor to get their name on a sign in America?

Faint moonset over our hotel in Cleveland:

Cuyahoga Valley “National Park”, in its one very pretty view:

Tiny toad!

Much larger dragonfly:

The rushin’ waters of the Cuyahoga:

Bikers are the most common wildlife in this Park:

Tomorrow: Pennsylvania

Part 13 in a 16-part stately series pictorially documenting the Sojourn.

Thursday: Indiana

If only they were the “Good Lakes”:

Mmmm… baseball….

Those are some fierce cats:

In case you were wondering where we are:

Emily attempting to high-five the Tiger:

Nifty whale mural in the distance:

This guy convinced me he was real and waiting for the People-Mover, at least at first:

The Ren Center:

Inside the stadium:

Pretty cool scoreboard:

And a run comes in:

The only place in America where the sports team supports a company rather than the other way round:

The bright lights of Detroit:

The Pepsi Porch area looked neat from a distance:

The tigers’ eyes light up when the team scores a run:

Fireworks!

Next up: Ohio

I talk a lot about the 85% rule, which states that at any given time, 85% of all people are idiots, or mailing it in, or both.

But rarely do succinct manifestations get mailed to my door:

[portions redacted by recipient]

I’m not sure we should be so hasty, PSE&G. Do you really want to take this out of Unknown Unknown’s name so quickly when they’ve been such a loyal customer?

Also, what exactly is your current mailing address on file for Unknown Unknown? Arlington National Cemetery, perhaps?

Which begs the question of why you would send this notice to the old mailing address. I look forward to next week, when I will receive a bill for $3,521.89 at this address, representing the total accrued costs for Unknown Unknown’s use of electricity.

I am tempted to call them and claim to be Unknown Unknown, requesting service in my new location. In the meantime, I should go frame shopping.

Part 12 in a 16-part stately series pictorially documenting the Sojourn.

Yesterday: Illinois

Crossroads indeed – this is the only picture we took in Indiana:

Tomorrow: Michigan

Part 11 in a 16-part stately series pictorially documenting the Sojourn.

Yesterday’s Post: Iowa
Actual Previous State: Wisconsin

They’re really into the whole Lincoln thing in Illinois:

I, on the other hand, am really into that whole Ray Bradbury thing in Waukegan:

Emily liked the space-age swingsets:

The ravine from Dandelion Wine:

Really nifty explanation of the renaming of the park for Ray:

Skyline of Chicago:

Skyline from US Cellular Field (frmrly New Comiskey):

I’m not exactly clear on what the pinwheel thing is on the South Side, but they seem to be into it:

Right after some home-run fireworks:

You can putitontheboard – yes!

Blue tower near the Magnificent Mile:

A river runs through it:

Emily was unconvinced that this building was all that tall:

I can’t believe they’re trying to rename the Sears Tower – it doesn’t seem to be sticking with any of the locals:

The Sears/Willis Tower was really a fan of the 2016 Olympic bid, though:

I’m pretty convinced – it’s tall:

Guess what – another Union Station!

Emily with her namesake, or at least one rendition:

Perfect blue buildings?

I’m pretty sure these were in the establishing shot for the Bob Newhart Show:

Tomorrow: Indiana

Part 10 (should be 9) in a 16-part stately series pictorially documenting the Sojourn.

So in my rush to get these out, I forgot Iowa. I know, I know. My 48th state of all time. So while yesterday’s post was Wisconsin, it should have been Minnesota. For those of you scoring at home.

Fields of Opportunities!

McGregor, Iowa. If I had to live in Iowa…

I still kind of can’t get over this restaurant’s name:

The effigy mounds. They are difficult to photograph from ground-level:

It was a hot day:

The park is beautiful, with or without mounds:

The mighty Mississippi:

Next (actual chronology): Wisconsin
Next (posting chronology): Illinois

Part 9 in a 16-part stately series pictorially documenting the Sojourn.

Yesterday: Minnesota

One of the most elaborate state signs, replete with governor… I guess when you have governors for 4 consecutive terms (see Tommy Thompson), it feels like something to etch on a sign:

The capitol, which we sadly forgot to take the camera into – overall, perhaps the nicest of the many state capitols I’ve seen:

On the way to the Dells, we saw this sign. Em was captivated, but we didn’t stop to sample the cuisine and compare it to Em’s beloved in Oakland:

This is more or less what most of the Dells look like. For some reason, it was not what I was expecting:

One of the cooler formations:

The “stack of pancakes”:

It occurs to me that while the subtitle for the Sunset to Sunrise Summer Sojourn 2009 was “National Parks and Baseball Parks”, it could have just been “Rock Formations”. I mean, really. We saw a few:

Green… in the wa-ter…

This picture… rocks.

Toadstool formation:

Those aren’t rocks – those are bricks!

There wasn’t a game within a number of days of our visit to Milwaukee, but they still let us in to a part of Miller Park, from where we could see the field:

Emily was enthralled by the AAGPBL exhibit, honoring the Wisconsin-based basis for perhaps her favorite movie, “A League of Their Own”:

One of the niftier takes on retractable roofs I’ve seen:

Tomorrow: Illinois

Part 8 in a 16-part stately series pictorially documenting the Sojourn.

Friday: South Dakota (part two)

One of the cooler state-entry signs:

The Jolly Green Giant in Blue Earth. It’s hard to see because of the trees directly behind her, but Em is standing under the Giant, between his boots:

The Blue Earth DQ. I love DQ.

The Metrodome! In its 30th-to-last baseball game ever:

Kirby:

The dramatic nightscape of Minneapolis on the postgame walk back:

Churchill:

Sadly, in the early morn rush out the door for the camping trip, I forgot to take my camera up to Duluth and points north. Thus I have no pictures of Highway 61 (yes, that Highway 61), Duluth, Lake Superior, Gooseberry Falls, or the campfire. This makes me sad, though I think one of the couples we camped with got some shots that may one day find their way back to us. So just imagine what those things might have looked like and we’ll see you…

Tomorrow: Wisconsin

Part 7b in a 16-part stately series pictorially documenting the Sojourn.

Yesterday: South Dakota (part one)

Today, we finish up South Dakota, with the Badlands through Mitchell…

The Badlands are a bit like a lunar landscape:

Or perhaps like Mars:

But with rabbits!

Our first day there, it was quite stormy:

There are paths atop most of the formations, leading out from the ridgeline upon which people can walk:

‘Twas nice and windy too:

The formations are all quite dramatic, a bit like getting to drive through the base of the Grand Canyon:

It had cleared up some by the time we headed out for our camping trip:

We were advised to register in the Backcountry log so someone would know we were out in the hinterlands – there are no other passes, fees, or registrations for Badlands camping!

Inspiring:

A view of the rock formation which we camped against:

See?

The line cutting diagonally across this formation is a different type of rock that looks for all the world like a ribbon or a sports field line:

A rabbit?

An eagle?

A sunset!

A moonrise…

The next morning, it was plenty bright:

Still windshield with grasshopper:

One of our hikes later in the day involved this epic ladder:

It was worth getting to the top, though:

A Martian metropolis?

Bubbly formations in close-up:

One of the widest-spanning views:

We depart…

…for Mitchell and the Corn Palace!

San Francisco, a la corn:

This is a pretty corny scene:

Next up: Minnesota

Part 7a in a 16-part stately series pictorially documenting the Sojourn.

Day before yesterday: Nebraska

I have decided to divide South Dakota into two parts since there’s so much to cover. Today will cover Wind Cave through Wall, while tomorrow will be the Badlands through Mitchell. Never been to South Dakota? It may be the most underrated state in the union.

This is a lot of America stuff for one sign:

Wind Cave National Park is actually one of the oldest, if more obscure. Here our intrepid tour guide on the Natural Entrance Tour demonstrates how fast the wind is coming out of said cave:

Wind Cave is famous for “boxwork” formations, which look like this:

I saw an old pirate skull in the cave!

Wind Cave is the largest source of boxwork in the world. It’s different than typical stalactite/stalagmite cave formations, but no less cool:

This ranger at the Wind Cave station was a great animated storyteller:

Buffalo!

We went for a hike in the Wind Cave area, looking for wildlife:

We found another cool rock formation instead:

The buffalo didn’t really show up in earnest till we crossed into Custer State Park:

Classic bison pose:

There was a herd:

Mother and child reunion:

Other large mammals:

Another buffalo herd – we saw well over a hundred buffalo in CSP:

A calf getting a snack:

These antelope looked for all the world like they’d leapt in from the African savannah:

This is pretty much funny only if you’ve visited the Taj Mahal. Emily’s simulating the motion that many tourists were making when posing for pictures in front of said Mahal. The problem is that I didn’t have time to take the shot from the correct angle because all these militantly patriotic people were looking at us like we were urinating on their vision of America. So we had to make it quick. In some ways, though, I think that makes this shot even funnier:

Not only did the world change on 9/11, but apparently so did Mt. Rushmore. There are all these new installations to deal with the increased patriotic traffic. But this Bush administration contribution was our favorite – naming Lincoln’s suspension of habeas corpus as one of his 4 (four) “National Highlights”:

This was my actual favorite part of Mt. Rushmore – evidence that its sculptor saw the project more as a memorial to a country that would someday be gone, not a swaggering announcement of American permanence. This statement contradicted so many of the other quotations about the carving, which stated that it showed America would last for a million years.

Wall Drug!

Wall Drug is like a big theme park dedicated to kitschy stores and the Old West. I absolutely love it. It purports to be “America’s Roadside Attraction”. I think its restaurant inspired (or helped inspire) the design of the Frontier in Albuquerque. Where else can you see a twenty-foot T-Rex that periodically rises up and roars with smoke and steam pouring through his nostrils?

Seven foot rabbit!

A riding jackalope!

Five-cent coffee! (Yes, they still sell it for a nickel a mug. I had several.)

Huge pterodactyl!

Tomorrow: More South Dakota!