Told ya

You Are 19 Years Old

You are a teenager at heart. You question authority and are still trying to find your place in this world.

What Age Do You Act?

Two thoughts

The SOOTTAD has suggested that there's acceptance, and then there's rolling over like a dog. Her acceptance ends when you start to behave like a dick.

I definitely think there is some wisdom in this.

My own thought: talk is just talk. People are defined by their actions not their words. (Unfortunately, this immediately reminds me of a line from Total Recall, spoken by the mutant leader Kuato: "You are what you do. A man is defined by his actions, not his memory.")

Weekend update (AEM and otherwise)

Busy weekend; lots of ups and downs. I started to write a fairly detailed account of the trials and tribulations that have transpired in the last 48 hours, but I think it might be better to just present as quick a summary as I can muster. I think it's still by no means short.

I flew down to North Carolina Friday evening for a wedding in Chapel Hill on Saturday. I was meeting the SOOTTAD at the airport, although my flight was actually getting in about 3 hours before hers. I figured I'd spend the time studying and working on a paper, and maybe if I was so inspired, do a little drawing.

Anyway, it turned out to be a pretty hectic afternoon. All the little things kind of trainwrecked: work tasks took a little longer, little chores around the house before I left, last minute packing. I felt pretty rushed, but I made it to the airport more or less as planned.

But to be fair, my plan was a little crazy.

The wedding was Saturday afternoon and there was a post-reception party at the groom's parents' house that I didn't want to miss (mmmmm, barbecue), but I wanted to make it back for class Sunday morning. So I booked a return flight that left on Sunday morning around 6AM that was scheduled to arrive in Boston at 8:09am, giving me a grand total of 21 minutes to get from the plane out the terminal onto the shuttle to the parking lot to my car and to school by 8:30am. I can summarize this plan in two words: DUMB. ASS.

Anyway, there's a lot of beating myself up for making this decision, not taking appropriate measures to improve the situation, making other decisions that made the situation worse (such as taking me on a scenic tour of LaGuardia airport and reducing the amount of time I actually have to study or work on my paper) but I did manage to safely arrive in RDU, get my return ticket changed (without a painful $400+ change fee and price difference), get some of my paper written, pick up the SOOTTAD and only get us lost once before arriving at the EBC dance event in Carrboro to find the friends of the SOOTTAD who are putting us up for the weekend.

Saturday, we manage to wake up with just enough time to iron shirt and dress and get our asses to Chapel Hill for the wedding and reception. A short but very sweet ceremony. Tasty hors d'oeuvres. Dancing. Good times. Afterwards, there's a minor boondoggle caravan in search of a vintage store that we never find. I'm exhausted, so I let the SOOTTAD drive while I try to work on my paper a bit. We hit the post-reception barbecue and mingle some, but mostly, I hide myself away and work on my paper. I manage to finish just as most people are leaving. Still, we get to spend some quality time with the happy couple and the groom's parents who have to be some of the nicest people in the world. I've seldom felt so comfortable hanging with a friend's parents. It felt good.

Back to our hosts' apartment -- they're out at another dance event. I haven't seen them since the night we got in. We stay up late again for no reason, doing nothing, really. I draw a little. Sleep.

Up early this morning, though not ungodly early. But sadly, not early enough to get breakfast together. I'm on the 9:27am flight back to Boston, so we shoot to get to the airport at 8:30am and arrive without incident. And, of course, when I go to check in, I discover... my flight's been delayed. *sigh* I spend some time drawing, inking some of the stuff I did last night. The rescheduled flight is now scheduled to depart at 10; we actually leave the ground around 10:30. Touch down in Boston just before noon, and I'm right back where I started with a class to make (our Module 3 technique assessment) in 20 minutes. I'm out of the terminal by 12:05 and end up waiting 20 minutes for the shuttle to the economy lots that come every 15 minutes. (Annoyed? Why yes, why do you ask?) I'm already late, even before I get to the lot at 12:34. In my car, through the gate and stuck at a light by 12:35. I make it to Watertown in 13 minutes, park and sprint. In the classroom, stressed, winded and shaking with nerves at 12:50pm.

But reentry is good. Everyone in class is warm and welcoming. W gets me on the table so she can do her assessment, and 40 minutes later we're at the break and I'm feeling several orders of magnitude better.

Yay, massage therapy.

Things are a little rough in the skills and dynamics class for which I'd written the paper the previous night. Looks like we're stormin' again. Still, the class overall is genuinely supportive of one another so I make it through to the end of class and head home to friendly kitties.

Oh yeah, and for the day I ate:

• 1 apple danish
• 1 can of tomato juice
• 1 small bag of pretzels
• 2 Zone energy bars
• 1 handful of popcorn

Home for a few hours, it finally occurs to me to have something to eat. I bust out some ramen and egg.

Yeah, it's been one heck of a weekend.

* * *

So, not a lot of time to draw or post, but here's what I've got for the last few days.

Day 4:

Originally uploaded by tallasiandude.
I finally had a moment to catch my breath once with met up with Ja & Je at the dance in Carrboro. While we waited for them to finish up (they were competing in a Jack & Jill), I did a little sketching of the dancers. I've always had trouble sketching moving subjects, but sometimes ya gotta do whatcha gotta do.

Day 5:

Originally uploaded by tallasiandude.
Back at Ja & Je's apartment, not ready to go to sleep just yet. Hands have been sketching subject matter for years. I'm actually planning on doing some more with this one, but I was pretty happy with how they came out, so I thought I should capture it for posterity before I "ruin it."

Day 6:

Both originally uploaded by tallasiandude.
I tried to catch a picture of this image at the wedding but my timing was always off or it came out blurry or I couldn't frame it right. This is probably as close to going from mind's eye to paper, although I'll admit that I did use some of the photos I took as reference. In some ways I actually like the sketched version better than the final ink -- I feel like the sketched version almost has a warmer quality to it, possibly due to the fuzziness of the lines. Funny, that. (However, it's much easier to capture photos of the inked stuff. I suppose I should just suck it up and use the scanner -- we'll see.)

Today's lesson

Learn acceptance.

Of Others.

Of myself.

AEM Day 3 - Fish tests

Originally uploaded by tallasiandude.

Ok, I got too serious and busted out the old Rapidograph Koh-I-Noor set and india ink today. Which may have been a mistake, because along with them came the old indecision, self-doubt and uncertainty. I got to the point where I should just suck it up and try something and see what happened, but instead I got stuck.

All the positive feedback went to my head. Only the best for my viewing public! Too worried about disappointing people. About disappointing myself.

I couldn't finish it for fear of "ruining it."

So in its stead, I present to you: "unfinished fish" and "fish experiments." (Yes, there's definitely a fish theme going on -- you might even see the original seed which spawned the drawing from Day 2.) Hopefully I'll settle down and finish it later this month.

Oy. Bedtime.

The Way I Am

The first drawing I did for AEM initially seeped into my brain after listening to "The Way I Am" by Martin Sexton.

The Way I Am

The other night I had a crazy dream
'Bout a man in a fishing hat selling magazines
All the way from Kingston he'd worked his way down
I bought him a drink on the night they kicked him out of town

He said, "You know I don't like the way I am."
"No, I don't like the way I am."

And I saw an old fisherman out swayin' on a dock
Swigging a jug of something and a string of fish that he had caught
His wife had left him just a week before
She packed up her bags and waltzed on out the door

She said, "You know I don't like the way I am."
"No, I don't like the way I am."

And then she cried

And you and me walked down the shores of our youth
Chasing the sunrise, challenging the truth

It's all so distant now I've seen too many lies
Turning my vision into crumbling demise

Makes me wanna say
You know I don't like the way I am
No, I don't like the way I am

But I'm gonna change the way I am
I'm gonna change the way I am

Clearly it's still there, floating around in my head.

The song is somewhat haunting, a little sad, and yet heartwarming. The last acapella-yodelly thing he does at the end gives me warm shivers, if that makes any sense.

And I think, "yeah, I don't like the way I am." There are things I need to change. I'm gonna change the way I am. But then, I realize that that's not quite right. I don't like some parts, that's true. But overall... I think I'm ok. Maybe I need to tidy some things up here and there. And yeah, the SOOTTAD keeps telling me I should push my limits and boundaries, get out of my comfort zone every once and a while. (e.g. we should travel to places where I can't speak the language, among other things.) But y'know... I'm good.

There's a funny thing about the way I hear songs. Usually what grabs me are melodies and quality of sounds. Words while important, are often secondary. It's always disappointing when the words don't match the feel of the music -- I don't know if this happens to everyone or it's a peculiar cognitive dissonance that's just particular to me. But these days I've become more cognizant of the *moment* when the meaning of the lyrics finally registers. It must be a back-auditory-channel thing.

I heard the Indigo Girls the other day on the radio on my drive to frisbee. I learned how to the play the song in college -- over 15 years ago now. Learned the words and everything. And yet, it was like the first time I really heard the words.

there's more than one answer to these questions
pointing me in a crooked line
the less I seek my source for some definitive
the closer I am to fine

It's the first time the song spoke to me, not just as pretty sounds and harmonies and something I could reproduce on a guitar, but an affirmation. "Us too." We all walk alone. But paradoxically, there's company, if you look. If you listen.

I'm on my winding, meandering path. Ever closer.

AEM Day 2 - "Fish Outta Water"

Originally uploaded by tallasiandude.

Not sure where this one came from -- something about a fish swimming upstream got stuck in my head this morning. Had a few ways I was thinking about rendering it, maybe I'll do one of the alternatives later this month.

Oy. My hand is killing me.

I was planning on adding scales to the fish and putting more detail into the crowd in back, but I basically killed off the pen I was using, so I figured that was the sign telling me I was done for the night.

Probably should have been writing a paper or studying, or getting some work done, but this is definitely more fun. But I'm going to have to scale back on my goals a bit or I'm going to be seriously sleep-deprived by the end of the month. (And lose my job. And fail out of school.)

This is definitely going to be a challenge.

Art Every Day Month, Day 1

Originally uploaded by tallasiandude.

Art Every Day Month is a creation of Kat at Kat's Paws. Given my newly rediscovered inspiration and creative spark, I thought it might be a good way of giving me a nudge in the right direction. A little momentum, maybe keeping me from moving back into the dark places.

Positive change seems like it's just around the corner; I'd prefer not to blow it.

And there are little things that are working their way into my reality. Good things, I think. Woke up early (before 8am) this morning. There's been some weird business with the network connection into work (basically, I can't access the rest of the internet at large when I'm logged into the VPN, meaning that I can't access my non-work email from my laptop) so I was forced to reconfigure my work space so I could work by my desktop computer. Which forced me to tidy up my desk. (It's by no means clean, but it's a start.) And with the desktop on, I decided to listen to tunes, and it's the great randomness of every single MP3 I've ripped on shuffle on Winamp. (Poor man's iPod, I guess.) And at times in my brain, it'd be: song. picture. song. picture.

So this came from "The Way I Am" by Martin Sexton. At least that's where it started from. It sort of wandered into it's final form since it's never been a direct translation from my brain onto paper.

There's a good analogy out there somewhere that describes this process perfectly -- I just couldn't tell you what it is. The picture in my head is more about feeling than it is about shapes and lines and color. It's always a little fuzzy around the edges, if not through the center, dream-like, squinting through clouds and fog and mist. Which is frustrating. Except that when it's done, there's this strange feeling of surprise, of discovery of this thing you've made, like unwrapping a present, even though you theoretically knew what it was going to be the whole time, and you've watched it develop the whole way through.

Ok, I guess we'll see if I can keep this up for a whole month.

Fucked

What a bunch of fuckers.

...Sen. Orrin Hatch -- who as Senate Judiciary Committee chairman prevented dozens of Clinton nominees from getting up-or-down votes -- was asked today whether the Republicans would invoke the nuclear option if the Democrats filibustered Alito's nomination. His response, according to CNN: "You bet your life we would."

So glad the Dems bent over on the Brown, Owen and Pryor nominations back in May to "save the filibuster." Not that this is a surprise or anything -- you could totally see it coming. It's just depressing. Learned helplessness, I guess.

[Note: this came from Salon, which means if you're not a member, you have to sit through a short ad to see it. Suck it up. 'Cause then you can read This Modern World, among other things.]

Centered

I've been kind of out of for the past few weeks (basically since I got back from Europe) and it only seems like I've regained my footing in the last few days. I hadn't really thought about it until, at a team gathering last night, JTO asked me how I was doing, and after thinking about it for a moment, I gave him a one-word answer.

"Centered."

which is an answer that honestly surprised even me as it came out of my mouth.

I dunno. Maybe it's just the eye of the storm and I'm due to hit the crazy badness head-on again in a few days, but for the moment things almost feel, well, positive, and there seems to be a certain clarity about appreciating life.

All very shocking really.

Especially since over the last week, the normal depressive symptoms had been popping up with increasing frequency: lethargy, trouble getting to bed at a reasonable hour, trouble getting up in the morning, constantly looking for (and finding) distractions rather than taking care of the things that needed to get taken care of. The days are shortening, it's starting to get cold (heat kicked in for the first time this season just a few days ago), and it's the same-old same-old work, school and girlfriend a thousand miles away. And yet, somehow things suddenly seem ok.

But until he asked, I hadn't registered that there had been a subtle shift in my brain. The point that seems to best mark the shift occurred on Thursday, on the way to a lunchtime pickup ultimate game. Listening to "Do Your Thing" as I drove to the field, I suddenly felt... inspired. I was visualizing music videos again. Flash projects. I feel... excited about creating again.

Maybe it was playing disc in daylight for the first time in a long while. (A lunch pickup game the day before.) And then playing again that day. Maybe it was having a good practice session that evening with a classmate, a newfound friend, and then being able to hang out afterwards and get to know her better. To connect. Little moments of positive stuff.

Causes or effects?

And yet, last night, I still couldn't get myself into bed at a reasonable hour. Stayed up playing online poker for the first time in months, even though I had to get up early to play in a tournament the next day. Not a good sign.

Today.

Despite being up late, I woke up on time. 7:30am. (Thank you, time change.) Game day decision to wear a costume. (Underdog, from a few years ago.)

The weather: suboptimal. On Monday, it had been forecast to be sunny and in the 50's. By yesterday -- they were expecting snow and rain in the morning turning into rain in the afternoon with a high in the 40's. It did snow a bit during the first game, but actually wasn't too bad. At least not until the afternoon.

And I felt good. Despite not being in the best of shape, I thought I was playing well, the joy of playing taking over. Not stuck in my head, as some might say.

By the end of the day -- the weather was no longer fun. Wet, sticky snow accumulating on the field, on us, only the tracks from our running and sliding creating the dark patches not covered by snow. Out of gas and running on fumes, fingers aching, toes simultaneously numb and painfully cold. (How does that work?!) Whiny and actually kind of miserable, happy to cut the final game short (now a game to only seven).

My team finished second in the tournament. Like I told my friend and teammate RockStar after the summer tourney -- in the end, it means nothing and yet it means everything.

It's a hat league. It's for fun, frivolous. It's not like it's the National Championships. And even if it were, it's still just fun and games.

It's play.

And yet, it's everything about what life's about: seeing, feeling, being. Living in the moment. Appreciating everything. The feeling of catching the disc in stride. The pivot. The fake. The throw. Watching the disc glide through the air. Running. Moving. Breathing. Feeling.

Back home now, after a hot shower. A little perspective. Feeling alright, despite still not being able to feel all my toes, assorted muscles sore, tendons tender.

Still a pretty good day, all things considered.

Chinese Kids 1, Tony 0

What is it with these personal-webcam headshot lip-syncing videos?

• Tony singing..
• BSB-I want it that way

I don't know if there's some new meme or some crazy new, um, craze, but these two videos have popped up on one of my mailing lists in the last week. I find it bizarre, yet strangely compelling. (Although frankly, it quickly becomes too painful to watch Tony for very long.)

Anyone who's a little more hip and/or in tune with the kidz these days wanna shed some light on this?

Besides, maybe, bored friends surfing around Google Video...

Irony?

Headline:

White House Orders Satirical Paper 'The Onion' to Stop Using Presidential Seal

Maybe you really can't tell the difference.

Also on: Gawker, The Inquirer, and the original article in the New York Times.

[Thanks to Monkeyboy]

Disappointment

The Sneeze recently did a nice job summarizing my feelings on the new Mega M&M's:

"What the Mega F?"

V and I have discussed our disappointment on several occasions, especially after having watched a few of the (occasionally) amusing ad spots online. It really is kind of a bummer. From all the marketing, you'd expect it to be difficult to hold more than one or two in your hand. (Not melting, of course.)

I do have to admit that, even being maybe 50% larger, they do have an appreciably different taste which is certainly due to the increased chocolate-to-hard-candy-shell ratio. So, y'know, at least that's something.

My personal intuition and biases suggest to me that the reason that these candies aren't any bigger is that some pack of M&M lawyers (those would be the brown ones, I think) probably decided that anything over a certain size had to be considered a choking hazard, and thus a corporate liability. (Either that or there's some kind of overreaching federal* regulation on the matter.)

* Hmmm, maybe...

I am so smart ... S - M - R - T

You Passed 8th Grade Math

Congratulations, you got 10/10 correct!

Could You Pass 8th Grade Math?

I would have been embarrassed if I hadn't.

Feeling Old

(Sorry, more navel-gazing.)

I had an epiphany the other day.

I spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about how old I am. I notice that I'm usually at the older end of the spectrum in many of the circles I keep. Little things. The movies you saw growing up. The stupid little things you know that are history, like, really history, now. Usually it isn't too bad. I'm amused by it. It's kinda fun. I put on airs as "the old man." You were born in the 80's?! Wow, scary.

I call attention to it. Bigger, faster, stronger? No? Well, older then. So there! Show some respect, I'm old.

You might say I dwell on it sometimes.

And, well... I am getting older. Duh. But I've started to feel it catching up. More injuries, slower recovery time. I don't look like I'm in my twenties anymore. Early thirties maybe, but the illusion is beginning to slip away. And I just had a birthday a short while ago that's brought me ever closer to the big four-oh. I've edged out of the comfortable mid-thirties and am sitting uncomfortably on the cusp of my late-thirties. Thirty was good. Thirty was old enough to relax, old enough to appreciate, old enough (or perhaps I should say, young enough) to enjoy. I had a better sense of who I was (am), what my strengths (and weaknesses) were (are). The thirties have been about getting some perspective. A start, at least. The thirties have been treating me well ...for the most part. In an age sort of way.

But there's definitely a stigma about forty.

So the epiphany came when I was poking around Flickr and found a friend's pictures which included some pictures of her new man. And I thought (and I recognize how shallow and judgmental this is, but truth be told, I thought)

Wow, he looks old.

Not like old old, but like, well, old. Like an adult. A grown up. A real grown up, not like me who's been faking grown up only when he's had to.

I picture us stopping in for a visit and having to act all mature and talk about finance or the key events in the war of 1812. I imagine myself feeling uncomfortable during an awkward silence, after which he asks about what I do for a living or what my plans for the future are. Plans are? Like, what are you going to do when you grow up? Crazy shit, all playing out in my head. I'm not thinking about what he'd be like, I'm thinking about what a grown up would be like talking to a kid. That kid being me. And I catch myself. Because when I think about it, he doesn't look old. He looks like someone my age, actually. I mean, he could be older, but he could be younger too. And then it hit me.

He looks older than I feel.

Sure I've got a mortgage and a real car and a job and...stuff. But I spend as much time as possible doing stuff that just doesn't feel, well, like grown up stuff. I want to run around and play. Eat ice cream for a snack. Maybe breakfast. Or dinner. Read comic books. Dance. Play games. Nap.* "Kid stuff."

I don't feel old.

I feel young.

And I guess that's probably a good thing.

*funny how I never wanted to nap when we actually had mandatory naps in kindergarten.

Online bill-paying dumbass

I love online bill pay.

But love will turn on you. And it will be entirely your own fault.

But still, there is the love. Love is blind. Love is stupid.

With bill pay, there is the simple convenience of it. There is the economics of it. (I mean, it's like four bucks in stamps I'm saving every month.) But I particularly appreciate the way it can automatically take care of all fixed monthly payments for the car, the mortgage, insurance and all that.

There is one problem though. Though it is a problem which is entirely user-driven. Sort of by definition really, because the problem is user-error. With so much taken care of automatically, it becomes frightfully easy to forget to take care of things. So for example, having lost the structure of sitting down every month and writing checks, when it comes to my COBRA payments which need to actually go in the mail because they need to be accompanied by an appropriately signed payment slip every month, I tend to well... forget. (Like last month's payment which was 2 weeks late because I didn't remember to send it until some time after we had gotten back from Amsterdam. Whoops.) And it's easy to make typos -- mistype an amount, slip a decimal point, whatever. And when you're in a hurry because you've just remembered to make a payment at the last minute so you quickly jump online to take care of it, it's easy to just go through the motions and click through all the confirmations.

Perhaps you can see where this is going?

Because what happens next is that a few weeks later, you can't figure out why your checking account balance is so low. (Especially when you tend to obsessively quickenate. These things just don't happen.) And it's all very strange until you look through your payment history and you notice that for some reason you've sent $3500 to Verizon for your residential line.

Dumbass.

Well, that's weird...

[via WWdN: In Exile]

A brave and loyal associate full of optimism, you remain true to your friends and their efforts, to whatever end.

---

But in the end, it's only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer.

Full of optimism?

Those of you out there who actually know me: do any of you find this at all ironic?

Voter Fraud

Just followed this link from Monkeyboy, it's a video of computer expert's testimony of the likely use of vote-rigging software in the 2004 election.

Forget how you feel about Bush, if you value the freedom and equality that this country represents, it will make you depressed.

And the thing that's bothering me isn't so much that it happened... Well no, that's not quite right. It totally bothers me. It fucking pisses me off. But it doesn't surprise me.

But what is also really bothering me is that this isn't actually news. The testimony is from December 2004. What happened? Have they disproved his claims? Is there an investigation? What's going on?!

The most recent thing I can find online about "Clinton Curtis" is an article on voter fraud in June in the Washington Spectator. The stuff from The Brad Blog, while interesting, is all 10 months old.

I can't believe there isn't more follow-up on this. But, well... yes I can.

On having kids

WARNING: sensitive new-age guy (whiny bitch) talk ahead! Those nauseated by touchy-feely navel-gazing should steer clear.

(Well, it's only sort of navel-gazing-like, but still, you've been warned.)

I should first note that it's not like I'm actively thinking about having kids at the moment any more than a "hmmmm, do I want to have kids one day?" that will occasionally pop into my head. I suppose it isn't such a strange thing -- I don't really know why my initial reaction is to get all defensive over it. (besides being just one of my natural behaviors, that is.)

I mean, every single one of the close married friends from high school that I still keep in touch with already has kids or is due any day. My friends here are having kids. My teammates are having (more) kids. And of course, there are the parent blogs.

And let's face it, I'm not getting any younger. (On the outside, at least.)

The topic of kids came up talking to my hand therapist yesterday.

She hadn't gotten much sleep because her son had been up several times in the middle of the night.

She couldn't remember the last time she slept in on a Sunday and could just relax.

She didn't know where they were going to find the money to send him to college (eventually).

They're all the standard things that have come up in the past (no sleep, no time, no money), so I'll spare you any additional discussion of the thoughts and mental gymnastics over those concerns.

It's the new one that came up after reading Dooce and then PVP (of all places) that I found... er, interesting, I guess. They're about different things, but they feel related, to me at least.

In a nutshell: recognizing that parenthood is a pretty big commitment -- a sacrifice -- it had never occurred to me that a (my) partner's love for you (me) could be eclipsed by the love for something (someone) that was born (hey! is that a pun?!) out of that love.

It seems like it would feel a little like being left out in the cold.

And then, the idea of once again being heartbroken after developing this new love -- saddening. ("Tragic" seemed to be a little too strong.)

And yes, that sounded overly mushy and hearts and rainbows to me (and clouds and rain [...and earthquakes and plagues of locusts!]), but it seems to be the easiest way for me to articulate it in generic, theoretical terms.

And I recognize the selfishness in there, too. It's all about me, baby! (Hmm, unintentional pun. Interesting...) And I recognize that love can die or just whither away for other reasons, or even all by itself, but that doesn't exactly give me comfort.

And I guess the questions of the relative importance of loving versus being loved and what is the capacity of one person to love (to love someone more or less than another) are whole philosophical discussions in and of themselves.

But whatever, there it is. It's not like I'm going to be having kids anytime soon. (Especially given that the SOOTTAD still lives in another city a thousand miles away.)

Posting about the old noodles

I'd seen this article floating around the interwebs over the past few days:

Professor Houyuan Lu said: "Prior to the discovery of noodles at Lajia, the earliest written record of noodles is traced to a book written during the East Han Dynasty sometime between AD 25 and 220, although it remained a subject of debate whether the Chinese, the Italians, or the Arabs invented it first.

"Our discovery indicates that noodles were first produced in China," the researcher from the Institute of Geology and Geophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, explained to BBC News.

I found the article interesting simply as a self-professed noodle-lover (in addition to being a damn rice-eater). It was also somewhat noteworthy in the frequency of its appearance in my day-to-day random internet wanderings.

But only now have I been moved to post about it so I could give props to Yi for her concise assessment on the matter.

Short and sweet. Nice.