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From the PrezBo article in the Times : The Columbia Spectator, the campus newspaper, recently published an editorial skewering the Bollinger administration for what it characterized as dishonest dealings in its quest to acquire that land, as well as in addressing graduate students seeking to unionize. "In the not-too-distant future, Columbia might become the next Enron," the editorial charged. Mr. Bollinger, knowing where to pick his battles, would say only, "I think The Spectator is terrific."

If you'd like to eat a salad but you're not feeling the whole lettuce and greens vibe, perhaps you'd enjoy a tomato and bread salad. Chop up tomatoes (I'd go with plum tomatoes as they seem to be the heartiest in the Northeast right now; you definitely don't want mushy tomatoes for this), chop up a softish loaf of bread, add some minced red onions, olive oil, and a mix of white balsamic and rice vinegars. Spring some fresh basil and oregano and grated hard cheese on top, toss, and let it sit for 17 minutes or so. Then, eat.

For a while (say, the start of May until last week), there were chalked in shadows all over the sidewalks of Cobble Hill and Carroll Gardens. By chalked in shadows I mean that someone would go around and draw chalk outlines of anything that cast a shadow on the sidewalk. This provided crucial information as to whether a given mailbox was a vampire, a reverse-vampire , or worse. I documented it halfheartedly, thinking that with all the Bloggists in the neighborhood (hell, I've got one in the next room ), not to mention the Gothamist prowling the area, someone must have written them up already. But Google says no, so I guess this is a 34 exclusive. With the rains this weekend came an end to chalked in street art (Ellis G. should have chosen a less ephemeral medium for his street art), so I guess that's the end of that.

A lot of times a plane will crash a mile from where I am. This is why I stay off the beach.

A Hamburger Today is a blog about hamburgers (when?) today. I like hamburgers. If you've been following AHT for any period of time, which I really haven't, but I can read the archives, you'd have been surprised that they only got around to an In-N-Out posting today. Blue 9 Burger , the closest I've had on the East Coast to In-N-Out, was reviewed a few weeks ago. Their take on the employees of the two burger joints: "In place of Blue 9's 'troubled teens messily running our store' vibe, In-N-Out is a vision straight out of Happy Days." Ryan is totally Richie Cunningham. I've meant for a while to check out the Shake Shack in Madison Square Park; now that they're open late for summer hours I'll hopefully get the chance. And I'll take a picture of my burger there, since I seem to take a picture of everything nowadays.

Effective early September, all of my posts criticizing David Brooks will magically become super-premium content, and you'll need to pay me a couple of bucks to read them. Then you'll have to pay $50 more to read the offending column . The charge is wiaved for readers who maintain a physical friendship (well, not [necessarily] physical , but not electronic) with me, unless I find out that you've been talkin' shit about me or something. Then it's so on.

Well, shocked as I was to discover that Alice has a blog , the discovery that my roommate Adam now has a blog takes the cake. Nice job goading him into it, Dave. Tales of a 25th Grade Nothing (nice underlying URL) is promising because we like Adam and are confident in his ability to write entertaining bloggages, or at least post pictures of his upstate estate, and the literary allusion in the blog title bodes well. My guess is that he's going to write a lot about The Arcade Fire , as "Funeral" has been officially declared the "album of the summer"; a few months early, but still. Or he might just be angling for his own Blogger shirt .

Alice, who for years had absolutely no Internet access outside of the Spec office due to sketchy Ethernet wiring or something (I could never figure out what), has come a long way: she's got a blog now. Pattern Recognition is a group blog thingy that she started as a final project for a class, I gather, and automatically becomes the most intellectual thing on the Internet. I hope you keep it active even though the class is over, Alice.

After much sitting on my ass and not getting the nerd-phone replaced for one with a working camera, I got off my ass and got the nerd-phone replaced for one with a working camera. I'd already set my Flickr site up, and they've got a nice email gateway for posting pictures, so maybe I'll start photo blogging there from the phone when the situation calls for it. Check out the page or subscribe to the RSS (or Atom ) feed for new stuff. Recently added are some photos of Tim Hawkinson 's massive organ. I was walking around the city with Eugene, killing some time after seeing The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (which maybe I'll write about separately and maybe I won't; Zooey Deschanel's alarmingly large eyes deserve mention regardless) before Ryan's retirement dealy , and he remembered that there was a giant floating organ somewhere in the neighborhood. The nerd-phone's web browser helped us locate it right next to Niketown. Dude really just rip...

A lot of times people build working harpsichords of of Lego blocks. Well, more often than you'd think.

My roommate Adam, fresh from a sojourn at his estate in the Catskills, brought back a bag of what's commonly referred to as "junk" from Wal*Mart. I gather there's a Wal*Mart up there somewhere. Adam has been known to buy frozen rabbit stew meat from Wal*Mart (which, when you think about it, they shouldn't be selling in the first place), but there just seemed to be bagel chips and granola bars and corn muffins in this bagful. Toasting a corn muffin and putting butter on it isn't really a recipe, but if you've never tried it, go and do so. It helps if the muffins are evil, but if you put on enough butter it really doesn't matter. Adam also points out that he got his mother a $25 kitchen clock from Wal*Mart for Mother's Day, and it's "the best looking clock ever, with raised numbers and shit."

Wait, that's my point of view? On "Adult Swim," for example, "Aqua Teen Hunger Force" follows the dysfunctional relationship of a lazy milkshake, a childish meatball and a fatherly order of fries. "For young people, it's really about wanting to engage with personalities that understand their point of view," said Stacey Lynn Koerner, executive vice president at Initiative, a media planning and buying firm.

Ryan's retirement party was last night (he starts work at Computers for Youth on Monday, so there was a small window of opportunity), and a good time was had by all. Ryan managed to retire at 24, which beats the kid who retired at 28 written up in today's Times . Of course this guy actually moved down to Florida, which is slightly harder-core than moving to Boston, at least within the framework of retirement. The article is written by Warren St. John, whom everyone seemed to care about when he came to the Blue Pencil Dinner, for reasons that weren't entirely obvious. I must admit that they're still not obvious.

I'm, you know, heterosexual (in case your were wondering), but I really love Steve Nash. I also really love the Dallas Mavericks, and Steve Nash's departure from the Mavs this past summer was a source of much anguish. Now the Mavs find themselves matched up with MVP-to-be Nash's Phoenix Suns in the second round of the NBA playoffs. My loyalties are squarely Dirk-ward , but I really don't think I'll be able to bring myself to root that Nash gets an aneurysm every time he handles the ball like I did with Tracy McGrady. We'll see what happens. And sorry about the Celtics , Dave.

I read with some amusement in Gothamist today about the Ms. Columbia contest (obligatory Spec article here ), an online beauty contest dealy. The thing is, I know one of the two site organizers, having recruited him for a full time position at work once his graduates. He's a good guy, very much into photography and technology, and I'm not going to weigh in on whether setting up an online beauty contest for Columbia girls (with bonus lingerie and wet t-shirt pictures) is a smart way to spend the last few days of one's college career. Still, I'm rather surprised that he shut it down due to what seems like a small amount of public protest; did he think when he started it that no one was going to object at all? Maybe I should try to interview him, though that would bring 34 dangerously close to the legitimate media establishment. Back when I was in London training with some folks from the Tokyo office I remember them showing me this website for the Miss Kawaii competiti...

The New York Times is reporting that Stephen Colbert is getting his own mock talk show, following the Daily Show each night. I really should be at work by now, but this is probably the biggest thing to happen in my life, at least in the past several years, so stay tuned for more bloggage later. ...and thanks to the twins mysteries of time and editable posts, we're back. I realize that I don't really have much to say about The Colbert Report, other than I'm sure it will be immensely entertaining and I'm very happy to have an extra two hours of quality TiVo-age each week. Colbert is by far the funniest correspondent (his Rick James story from last night was brilliant) and is the only one who can sit next to Jon Stewart and crack him up during their expert discussions. I can only hope that "This Week in God" will be segueing over to the new show.

The Gotahmist is making it easy for me to keep tabs on Coney Island's redevelopment , which I previously weighed in on . The Daily New article is most notable for mentioning Democratic City Councilman Domenic Recchia, who in his previous life was a little Italian man whose Spanish class I was in for one semester in high school. (There wasn't much demand for Italian at Lincoln.) This was first semester Spanish, before they could split us up into honors and non-honors, so the class wasn't... very good. His method of getting the class under control was to go up to students who were talking and make a claw out of his hand and point it at them. It was oddly effective, and undoubtedly will come in handing for resolving impasses whilst crafting local ordinances.

It's not terribly my birthday still, but lingering celebrations do remain. One of them took place last night at the apartment of these kids I know, Ryan and Sarahs. Ryan cooked me up the steak, they plied my with alcohol, and we had fun with all the birthday toys. The evening was documented on Ryan's sweet-ass new digital camera, and I've posted the highlights on my Flickr page . I hadn't played around with Flickr before this but it seems like a decent way of sharing photos, and they have a nice program that will automatically upload photos from my Mac. It's a lot easier than exporting things from iPhoto to a web page and then trying to find some place to host it...