Shootin some bball outside of the school

Presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama played pickup basketball with the Tar Heels Tuesday morning at the UNC practice facility. Senator Obama was in Chapel Hill for a campaign rally on Monday evening at Smith Center and asked to play ball with the team. Nice play Barack. Let's face it... it should really just come down to Barack and Hill in a nice game of one-on-one. Clearly normal politicking isn't helping anymore. Take off the heels and the fake smiles and play some ball!! Maybe just knock-out. Or horse. Winner takes all. Bam! Problem solved....

TramaDramaRama

I love this painting. It took me a minute to notice that the people are actually in repeating order, not just two people gossiping, but person to person to person and so on. What is it about possessing a piece of information that causes it to sit and burn inside us, like a pending sneeze, begging to burst out?? It's compelling. Addictive. Sucks us in. Is anyone immune? Men, I think, by nature are much less prone to be gossip queens but are by no means innocent in this regard. Whether it's a piece of our own lives we can't wait to get out or a piece of someone else's life, it takes a great amount of self control to restrain ourselves from blasting it across the headlines.

I thought that the gossip gene was something I'd eventually grow out of, that I'd no longer care who said what and why and how. But alas. This is not so. I pretend like I don't care but, I admit, I do enjoy hearing the skinny. Unless it's just mean and tacky. I don't want to convey that I'm sitting around bashing on people. "Sharing of news" doesn't necessarily imply negative ninnies sitting around making caddy remarks about what everyone was wearing that day.

The gossip gene is clearly in all of us hence why they try to get us while we're young. I can't even name all the youth lessons and even adult lessons that have covered the gossip issue. I recall a demo/skit our group did at girls camp one year. We had a line of girls facing the crowd. The first girl took a sip of "water" out of a glass labeled "gossip". She mimicked the action of whispering the "gossip" into the next girl's ear and so on down the line. I got to be the girl at the end who received the "gossip" in it's final form. To demonstrate this, I was to then spit out my "gossip" back into the glass. Little did they know, I had a piece of melting chocolate in my mouth so when I spewed the remnants of the "gossip" out, it was a murky brown color. Lesson being, the more you pass it on, the dirtier it gets. Lovely story huh? To illustrate the Mormon-ness of this story, I have also included the wonderful Mormon-ad of gossip that we all know and love.

It intrigues me why our human nature, or maybe our modern Western culture, compels us to gossip. Why do we care? Though it often depends on the nature of the info. You don't hear whispers of who got new drapes this weekend and their controversal color. *Gasp* Oh, no she didn't!?! That witch!!! It's no secret that the more scandalous the information, the more interesting it is... especially when it comes to people's love lives. Seriously. Anyone who left home for college knows that the number one question you received when coming home for breaks was "Soooo, who are you dating...??" I wouldn't say that I have a gossip problem. More that I can see how gossip becomes a problem. I do make an effort to contain information (personal and otherwise). Maybe I'll just start letting it all out in a book with people's pictures in it, but then that has the potential to get copied and distributed throughout the whole school which then will necessitate an intervention with everyone involved... so I guess I'll steer clear of that option...

Too tempting not to post

The Ten Most Annoying Singers
by Rob O'Connor

It's stunning to learn that others don't share our tastes. Then again, how did an entire generation embrace faux wood paneling, shag carpets and putting thick plastic on their furniture? Well, someone thought it was a great idea!
Hey, I like Bob Dylan's voice and kept him off this list because I could! Instead, I found the ten singers most likely to make you drive off the road.
Now that's a terrible fate. Not only are you stranded in some ditch, but you're stuck listening to one of these ten singers, who it would seem are singing that way just to mock you. Oh, the injustice.

10) Celine Dion: I know there are millions of people who would beg to disagree, but let's get real, people. She sings 15 notes where one would suffice and turns every song into an anthem for self-empowerment. It's like getting an hour of Oprah condensed into four minutes. She sings. It's time to start the lawnmower.

9) John Mayer: Young people are impressionable. I'm not sure where John Mayer learned his vocal craft. I hesitate to call it singing. It's more like whimpering. And for some reason, this has become a trend not stopping anytime soon. As you'll sadly learn as we go further down this list.

8) Conor Oberst: As the wunderkind who leads Bright Eyes, Conor Oberst was given a certain amount of leeway since he was a young teen when he started out and his precious singing--so sensitive and intimate you could hear the post-nasal drip--was mistaken as precocious. Well, he's in his 20s now and he still sounds like he's swimming back to the womb for protection from this hard, harsh world. Come on buddy, stand up straight and stop trying to imitate the Cure's Robert Smith. He got there first. And even he must know he sounds a little silly.

7) Lily Allen: Contrary to this column, I want to like fresh, young talent. I want to hear singers bring true commitment to their material. The first time I heard Lily Allen I thought it was quaint. Then it seemed every young female singer was determined to sing just like her, as if they're running out of air in their lungs and have to get back to the respirator before the next verse begins. Sure, she's bouncy and spunky. But if I might quote what Lou Grant once told Mary Tyler Moore: I HATE SPUNK.

6) Devendra Banhart / Tiny Tim: I'm not convinced they're not the same person. Tiny Tim was a novelty item singing with that stupid ukulele something about tiptoeing through the tulips. Anyone with any half sense would know it was novelty item that shouldn't be used as the basis for an entire recording career. And for thirty years, it wasn't, until freaky-folk dude Devendra Banhart showed up and started warbling in that unlistenable, untrained vibrato the kind of nonsensical lyrics that didn't sound all that great back when people were taking the kinds of drugs you're supposed to be on in order to enjoy it.

5) James Blunt: All this talk in the media about whether or not waterboarding is torture is moot. Forcing anyone to listen to "Beautiful" on repeat constitutes torture. You want my darkest, deepest secrets? This guy's quivering voice gets you my social security number, my mother's maiden name, my personal PIN and any random government secrets I'm currently harboring.

4) Frankie Valli: Frankie Valli was a hero to some back in his day. I grant you this. He was consistent! He consistently sang in a voice designed to send dogs running for cover and perfect for breaking glass. "Rag Doll, " "Sherry," "Dawn," "Big Girls Don't Cry," the list is enormous. He very well could be tried as a war criminal. Who would object? Seriously? Who?

3) Billy Corgan (Smashing Pumpkins): Yes, despite all his rage he's still just a rat in a cage. Unfortunately, that cage came with a microphone for him to transmit his Smashing Pumpkins hits to a helpless, hapless world at large. While Billy could orchestrate grand walls of guitar and write albums of endless tuneage, he insisted on singing it himself. Except this is not singing in any conventional sense, but rather the sound of a petulant, whiny child. This is what happens when parents don't tell their kids to shut up often enough. Children need to know you don't like them.

2) Scott Stapp (Creed): We could probably start laying the blame on Bono, Eddie Vedder, Jim Morrison and that guy from Blood, Sweat and Tears, but in the end it's Scott Stapp who epitomizes that macho bellow that sounds like a man who's gone overboard at the All-You-Can-Eat Buffet and has just received spiritual orders to let everyone know they're going to hell if they don't save themselves somehow. His spiritual torment becomes your problem. Thanks, pal.

1) Michael Bolton: OK, this was easy. C'mon, you knew Mr. Bolton would top the list. Who else can take a love song and turn it into a hernia? When a man loves a woman he doesn't do so by screaming in her ear--so why should it be acceptable for a man to sing a sensitive love song as if he's directing traffic for the hearing impaired? R&B classics deserve their place in musical history and should be protected from this man's desecration of all that is holy. It's only right. Let's make it a law.

Hello Dalai

This is not a political post. It's Friday and I'm not in a serious enough mood to post anything remotely important. But. This photo is priceless. Really. I've been reading up on the recent protesting of the Olympics. There was a news article on Fox News a couple of weeks ago about the Dalai Lama and his opinions on all the protesting and this was the picture that headed the article. It makes me laugh.

The Pope is currently in the US. Today they showed him "uncharacteristically" going deep into the crowd of people to talk, shake hands. Next, I'm expecting a photo of him crowd-surfing. How else can he beat the taunting demon Dalai picture?

What my iTunes says about me...

I love stealing things from other people's blogs. Here's how this works... take your ipod, MP3 player, iTunes, or whatever and set it to shuffle. The first song you come to is the answer to the first question on this list and so on. Don't cheat! You can make pretty much anything work. I didn't make up the questions....

How does the world see me?
Friends in Low Places - Garth Brooks. Am I the friend is a low place? Or are all my friends in low places?

Will I have a happy life?
What If - Creed. In case yall don't know this song. It's quite angry. "I know I can't hold the hate inside my mind." Whoa.

What do my friends really think of me?
Through the Iris - 10 Years. I'm hoping this means my friends think I have pretty eyes...

Do people secretly lust after me?
Seasons - Good Charlotte. My version of this song is live/acoustic where they introduce the song as... "this is a song about tortured love..." Go figure.

How can I make myself happy?
All I Need - Mat Kearney. I love this song. It's beautiful. Does this mean I need a man to be happy? Good gracious...

What should I do with my life?
Come baby Come - K7. LOL!!!!!

Will I ever have children?
Dream On - Depeche Mode. I swear I'm not making this up.

What is some good advice for me?
This is how we do it - Montell Jordan. Yo. Cuz baby I'm real.

How will I be remembered?
Mr. Jones - Counting Crows. Awesome. "We all wanna be big stars, but we don't know why, but we don't know how. But when everybody loves me, I want to be about as happy as I can be."

What is my signature dance song?
Feel Good Inc - Gorillaz. Windmill, Windmill... I have definitely jammed out to this song.

What do I think my current theme song is?
Confessions (part 2) - Usher. No, I have not gotten some chick pregnant, but confessions? maybe? Hm... interesting...

What song will play at my funeral?
Long Way Down - Guster. A cool song on seeing someone's true nature... although not really in a good way.

What type of men do I like?
Love for Me - Guster. "Cause I came. And I spoke. And you ran. Didn’t even wait to hear the words. Or see the look in my eyes." Apparently I like the heartbreakers...

What is my day going to be like?
Where are you now - Janet Jackson. "Do you still think of me, or does your heart belong to someone else's?" How depressing! How did I get such sad love songs for this? I swear that's not all I have in my 1000+ iTunes library.