Week in Review: 7 Feb 2009

Lost was pretty terrible this week. Honestly there was just too much going on. Nothing revelatory here, Ben masterminded the whole thing about try to get Aaron away from Kate. GASP! Becuase he doesn't do anything like that EVER. This had better be one of those episodes that is a necessary, if boring, bridge to a groin-grabbingly transcendant episode. I must admit the previews for next week look pretty good.

Who doesn't want their wallet back? Max Goltermann, that's who. As I was staggering home on Sunday morning (long story, one of "those" nights) I found a wallet on the ground and stuffed it in my pocket. This, of course, occured when I was practically sweating Kamchatka, so I forgot about until Monday morning when I found the thing in my coat pocket. This was Monday, and I am still in possession of his three bank cards, Discover card (who the fuck packs a Discover card??), student ID, and gym membership.

I am a stud at participles. Participles are really hard in Russian (i.e., the kid standing over there is a clod -- "standing" being the partciple). Even so, forming them is a formulaic kind of thing, at which I am good. Except those lousy past passives, they are hard like a body-building elf. Anyway, the other people in my class have a lot of trouble with them. I had a shitload of trouble with them too, at least under the Red Terror in fall of aught-7. But... like a sweet Simpsons quote, they have managed to stick to the interior of my brain like an undercooked blini.

Leah, perpetually bland and underachieving, is still on Top Chef. Yeah. That's right. I jumped on that bandwagon, but only just this season. I've seen most of the episodes and all of the more recent ones (post-Eugene-and-Melissa). Who the fuck quits a quickfire challenge? Also, I kind of liked Lezzy McGee, and was disappointed when she got the poisoned-stiletto boot from that melodramatic B-movie-female-pharaoh host of the show. Anyway, I put up an away message asking "When will they send that clown [Leah] packing," and got a surprising number of responses. Most interesting one goes to Faust, who said that "she was like wendy pepper from season one of project runway." I think my life has reached a new kind of low when people assume that I follow Project Runway. In conclusion, Leah is Ann from Arrested Development, and needs to go home to her precious Yam.

Larry Kudlow for the win. Thursday's "The Kudlow Report" on CNBC began with the quote of the week. I can't remember it exactly, but Kudlow gets all fired up about these Obama nominees who are constantly under fire or resigning due to tax-dodgery. Today he said (essentially) "We don't need a stimulus. We need Obama to appoint every high-level Democrat to a government post so that they'll pay their back taxes." Yes, yes, I know that I get on Democrats for saying non-productive things that just serve to enflame partisanship (coughcoughaoucoguhchg*Barneyfrank*couccoughcoughc). Why am I e-coughing. I can't stand Barney Frank. There, I said it, he's a bum. Anyway, it was pretty funny, and this tax-dodging nonsense is shameful.

If you didn't know already, no one uses floppy disks any more. For complicated reasons that interest no one, I had to try and find a floppy disk last week. It took me a week, asking around trying to avoid going into a store and asking if they have any floppies. My professors and colleagues who work for the university couldn't remember the last time they saw one used, much less having one. Big Lots had a box of 50 for $10, but there is not a single person left on earth who has use for that many floppies. Finally got a 10-pack at Office Depot.

I think this is the first and last of this kind of post that I will attempt. It sounds an awful lot like the Peter King columns that get pilloried (weekly) on KSK (a new addition to my daily website checklist).