Why did Robert Jordan write a prequel?

Suppose someone told you the following joke:

"So, a duck walks into a bar, hops up onto a barstool and he says to the bartender, 'Hey, do you have any grapes?' The bartender looks at him kind of funny and says, 'No, we don't have any grapes,' and the duck promptly saunters out. The next day, the same thing happens. Duck walks in, asks after grapes, bartender tells him no and the duck leaves. And again the next. At this point, the bartender is getting tired of this, so when the duck comes in the next day and asks for grapes, the bartender yells at him, 'No! For the last time, we don't have any grapes, and if you ask me for grapes again, I'm going to nail your beak to the bar! Now get out of here!' The very next day, the duck walks in and, oh, by the way, I should mention that this duck had feathers, wings, webbed feet and a tail. Years earlier, the duck had hatched from an egg which had been incubated by its mother using her body heat and insulating materials in a nest which was built near a body of water. Anyway, the duck walks into the bar and asks the bartender, 'Have you got any nails?' 'What? No,' says the bartender, a somewhat taken aback. 'Then do you have any grapes?'"

You'd be pretty annoyed, right? I mean, there's just no need to go and ruin the flow of a perfectly good joke with a bunch of unnecessary information that the audience already knew and didn't really need. Too bad nobody told Robert Jordan this.

Robert Jordan is the author of The Wheel of Time series, which I started sometime in middle school during my reading nothing but Tolkien-derivative fantasy phase. Once you get past the fact that Jordan never met an unnecessary, florid paragraph of description he didn't like and that he has an awkward tendency to describe in profuse detail the bosom of every female character (often multiple times for the major characters), his military-historic take on the fantasy epic makes for a pretty gripping read.

However, sometime after the release of the tenth or so book in the series, Jordan decided that what he should really do was break off mid-series and publish a sequel covering peripheral events 20 years prior to the main storyline. Because that's exactly what readers who have actually spent a majority of their lives waiting to find out how you're going to wrap up the 3,000,000-word monstrosity you've created want! It's like Jordan thought to himself, "Man, any fantasy author can jerk around his readers by taking forever to write sequels. I need to take my game to a new level." Well, mission accomplished there.

As luck would have it, shortly after the publication of said prequel, Jordan was diagnosed with some sort of terminal illness and died two years later (with the series nowhere near finished). While I don't have any actual proof that this was an honest-to-god divine smiting as punishment for severe authorial hubris, I can't see what else it could have been. Now He just needs to get to work on J.K. Rowling for Harry Potter 4-7.

Why can't people write résumés?

If your résumé is nine pages, I'm not hiring you.

If your résumé tries to convert obviously trivial employment like "made a login page for a website" or "was a cashier at Rita's Water Ice" into Nobel-prize-worthy accomplishments, I'm not hiring you.

If your résumé still has filler text like "write some bullshit here," I'm not hiring you.

And, most especially, if your résumé contains the following sentence, I'm not hiring you:
"I'm a Logical Thinking and Quick Learner, Rapidly Solving Technical Problems, Work Independently and Responsibilities."

That is all.

Why has having endings that make sense become passé?

This weekend, I picked up The Passage by Justin Cronin. I'll give it this, it was remarkably well-written, especially compared to most of vampire literature out there these days (not to worry, these vampires were of the evisceratey type, not the sparkling-in-sunlighty type). It opened as kind of a cross between The Stand and World War Z and eventually morphed into something entirely different, but I was quite enjoying it. Right up until the ending, in fact. I would warn you to stop reading if you don't want any spoilers, but there's no need because there isn't really an ending. And this wasn't even a "leaving it open for a sequel" kind of non-ending, this was just an "Oh crap, I have snarled this plot impossibly and have no exit strategy" non-ending. And it's not just Justin Cronin (although don't think I'm not pissed at you, buddy), I've noticed this disturbing inability to write a satisfying ending in a lot of modern authors.

Basically, there seem to be two schools of thought on the matter of endings. The first is the one I've detailed where you don't really bother to end it and just do the literary equivalent of a fade to black (Jonathan Franzen is another culprit here), then justify it by waving your hands and claiming that you achieve some incredible profundity by leaving the ultimate interpretation to the reader. It's pretty damn irritating.

The second approach is, to my mind, even more annoying, albeit more explicable. I think it happens when an author feels the same desire for closure as the reader but lacks a clear vision of how to do this, so he just replaces an actual climax and dénouement with progressively more frantic and insane activity. This is particularly evident in lots of modern novels because when your protagonist is a sad-sack who neither manages to do anything nor to whom anything happens for the whole story, it is perhaps a tad incongruous when the final chapter features several fistfights, a school shooting and a biblical flood *cough* *cough* Richard Russo *cough*. Also on the list of offenders in this category are Neal Stephenson (although he also wrote Snow Crash, so any other offenses are small potatoes compared to that traveshamockery), Michael Chabon and, while it pains me to include him on this list, Jasper Fforde. (In fact, I think Shades of Grey might get its own post. More on that later.)

Maybe I'm old fashioned, but I actually like my books to end. And I mean end in the sense of "all the plot threads tied up and all the characters' lives/problems/issues resolved," not just the "there are no more pages" sense. If you had a bunch of unexplained things happen through the book, you should probably explain them. If one of your characters is evil, he should either triumph or get his comeuppance. If you have a female romantic lead, she should either end up married, in a convent or dead. Please note that I'm not just saying you should vomit forth a random wave of weddings and funerals (Ann Patchett, I'm looking in your direction). All I want is for you to take the characters and narratives you have developed the whole book and bring them to some resolution. I'm sure you'll be roundly condemned by academia for stale mimicry of 19th century literature, but people might actually enjoy the entirety of your books. Novel, right?

Why is Italy a completely useless country?

I interrupt your regularly scheduled guest blogging to inform you that Italy is worse than you thought.

I am in a town--an actual town, with several thousand inhabitants, a train station, etc., not more than half an hour from Rome--and it was impossible, in an hour of walking, to find a pub showing the World Cup.

Look, I know that Italy are no longer playing. This is not my problem. It is Il Mondiale. They should have it on a television somewhere in this god-forsaken hellhole of a town. I'm pretty sure it was widely available on television in my hometown, which is not especially known for cosmopolitan taste in sport.

Additionally, the beer is undrinkably terrible, so there are no consolations at all.

Why won't people stop sending Ed Reed and Ray Lewis to the Pro Bowl?

Unless it's the Pro Bowl of "Jumping onto a man who has already been tackled well after the whistle has blown," the Pro Bowl of "Embarrassingly fumbling interception returns because you carry the ball like it's a soiled diaper you are trying to get into the trash as quickly as possible," or the Pro Bowl of Obstructing Justice, they don't deserve it. Stop voting for them. Ray Lewis can't kill all of you.

Ok, back to playing with this giant bag of wigs we found in the closet. FYI, I look excellent as a blond.

Why is the Wimbledon SlamTracker flagrantly useless?

I know, I know, this is kind of overlapping with Lushy's previous post about the French Open iPhone app, but the stupid SlamTracker app has gone so far beyond an ineffable cumbrousness and into blatant bustedness.

Half the time it fails to load. When it does load, it always seems to default to a detailed view of the least interesting game in the draw. (Unseeded women's doubles, anyone?) It only allows you to go to games that it thinks are currently in progress, and its notion of which games are in progress is almost wholly divorced from reality. Matches that have been over for 6 or more hours still display as being in the second set, other matches start and end without even appearing in the SlamTracker. The accompanying radio feeds spontaneously stop and can only be restarted by closing the entire widget and then gambling that it will open again. When it's feeling especially frisky, the scheduling page proclaims things like Roger Federer's next match is versus the Williams sisters on Court 14.

The coup de grâce really comes when you try to inform the boxful of inebriated hamsters that I can only assume comprise IBM's programming staff of just how defective their creation is. You click on "Feedback" and it opens a page back in your original browser (charmingly overwriting whatever page you happened to have open). You fill in a few details, toss in a few sentences about the most glaring flaws in the SlamTracker, add a couple insinuations about the proprietors' parentages, then you cap it all off with the subject "Your scoring app is garbage" and click "Submit", whereupon you experience instant catharsis. Sadly, these feelings are short-lived, since instead of submitting your feedback, the page instead redirects you to some odd, mis-executed javascript that produces a nearly empty white page containing only the word "true". I'm not sure whether this page is a deliberate nose-thumbing at the poor bastards depending on the SlamTracker or simply a bit of unintentional high comedy, but either way, useless.

Can the queen order these people beheaded? That's still within her powers, right?

Why won't this tennis match end?

114 games is too many games for a tennis match, and is far, far, far too many games for a single set. The net has broken, the scoreboard stopped working about 20 games ago and there have only been 5 break points in the entire set.

Also, the Radio Wimbledon announcers have spent the last 10 minutes talking about nothing but how much they have to go to the toilet.

EDIT: And what is this postponed on account of darkness garbage? You stay 'til the job's done, you pansy. At least the gangly one had the right idea. The sports and history gods had better now inflict karmic vengeance and force Mahut to lose in two games tomorrow morning.

(Whatever, this match is awesome. --Ed.)

(Whatever, you weren't even watching. --Barnes)

(Whatever, it's true, France still sucks. --Ed.)

Why is everyone on board the Mark Sanchez bandwagon? For that matter, why is anyone who is neither Rex Ryan nor Mark Sanchez's mom on board?

As a Browns fan, I have to put up with an awful lot of people mocking me for incredibly stupid things my team has done. "Hey, remember the Dwayne Rudd incident?" "Remember when the Browns drafted Tim Couch?" "Remember the entirety of the Phil Savage/Dwight Clark era?" "Remember when the Browns set the NFL record for most consecutive quarters without scoring a touchdown?" (27, if you're curious.) You know, stuff like that. You pretty much get used to it, by which I mean muster a weak laugh and then go sit fully clothed in the shower while sobbing and drinking straight from a bottle of Uncle Grandpa's Tennessee Whiskey.

However, living in New York, I often run into a particularly odd bit of mockery when people find out I'm a Browns fan, specifically, "Oh man, I bet you're kicking yourself for trading down when you could have had Sanchez."* Now, I will admit that I didn't love that trade, but I'm hardly losing sleep over missing out on Sanchez and generally say something to that effect. But Jets fans tend to ascribe this to a deep sense of denial and go on gloating about all the Super Bowls they're going to be winning with the guy.

The hyperbolic love for Sanchez doesn't even seem to be limited to New York partisans. In an ESPN column, Bill Simmons was ranking the active QB's and he put Sanchez in the top 10, trailing only Manning, Brady, Brees, Rivers, Rodgers and ROFLsberger. I just have to ask exactly which Mark Sanchez all these people were watching. Because the one I saw led the league in interceptions for most of the season and generally did his best to win the Dan Orlovsky Memorial "FOR THE LOVE OF GOD JUST GET RID OF THE BALL!" Award on every down. And even if you didn't have a chance to watch him play this year, the fact that he ranked 38th (DYAR) and 35th (DVOA) in Football Outsiders' QB metrics ought to tell you something. For reference, some quarterbacks that came in ahead of him: Jason Campbell, Bruce Gradkowski, Trent Edwards, Daunte Culpepper and (wait for it) Brady Quinn.

I simply cannot understand how the memories of a few shockingly undropped long bombs to Braylon Edwards prevent so many people from remembering that the Jets only made it into the conference championship thanks to a league-leading defense and rushing game, a few dozen rested Colts starters, and the Nate Kaeding face. I'm not saying Sanchez is the next JaMarcus Russell, but maybe the tiniest fragment of logic could enter into our judgment before we start proclaiming him the second coming of Namath? Maybe?

Ok, you're right, that's unreasonable. But can we at least put the stress on the correct syllable of his last name from now on?





* Cliff notes version for those of you who for some strange reason don't have the last few years of NFL drafts committed to memory: The Browns traded down from the #5 slot with the Jets, additionally picking up the Jets' second rounder and some random players. The Jets immediately picked Sanchez, the Browns would go on to trade down about 17 more times and eventually drafted Alex Mack.

Why can't Ikea instructions have words?

Look, I understand that they probably save millions of dollars by not having to pay translators, and I get as much joy as anyone (or possible more) in interpreting the instructions as "Tie yourself up with an antique corded phone before calling Ikea" or "Humping the furniture so vigorously that it shatters will result in nothing but regrets the next morning," but I really feel like a few judiciously chosen words might make the whole assembly process dramatically easier. You know, something like the occasional text that says "Hey, guess what? Despite looking identical to all the other random rectangular chunks of wood that came in this box, this particular one's orientation when you screw it down is actually super-important, although you won't realize it until much later when you are forced to disassemble the whole thing and start again." Or something a little bit more concise than that might also work. I might even be willing to settle for "!" (which would be cheap to translate, since I figure it pretty much translates to "!" or maybe sometimes "¡!" Well, except for Russian, where it translates to "Пингвин!" because Russian makes no goddamn sense at all.) At some point, Ikea just needs to admit that these aren't exactly Legos and that differentiating parts isn't as simple as counting the bumps.

And hey, while I'm suggesting ways Ikea could improve, if they could tell their store employees not to give really dirty looks to someone just because he happens to be throwing giant stuffed animals at people in the children's section of the store, that'd be great.

P.S. I will use a power drill to assemble this furniture if I so please. Just try and stop me. I dare you.

Why can't Whole Foods just be a normal grocery store?

I can't really explain the phenomenon, but in my experience there are certain classes of stores that, once you spend enough time in a representative sample of them, you develop a kind of intuitive sense of where to find things in one, even if you've never been in that particular franchise. Maybe it even works for all retail businesses, but I personally know that I can do it in hardware stores, book stores and grocery stores. I can't speak to the exact mechanism, but whatever it is, it's pretty handy when you just quickly need a 3/8" Forstner bit or a jar of cream of tartar or a copy of World War Z and don't have time to comb the aisles. This is why it drives me absolutely nuts that Whole Foods manages to totally defeat this effect.

I really don't understand how they do it, but they do. I make a beeline for where I know the cereal should be and I find myself in a section wholly devoted to organic loofahs and open buckets of fair trade bath salts. They make it worse by failing to preserve the basic associations that grocery stores should have. While looking for salt, I find the baking supplies and assume my quest is at an end. But no! I end up finding salt a full three aisles away with the artisanal vinegars.

Even once your bewildered looping around the store does deliver you to what you're looking for, there's a further obstacle: they refuse to sell anything normal, because apparently all normal foods are produced via evil, unfair or exploitative methods. There are 27 different kinds of imported sea salt (with tasting notes on display below each), but good luck trying to find regular Morton's iodized. Want to buy some sugar? Well, I hope you don't mind a giant bag of brownish organic sugar with granules the size of your fist, since it turns out that they make Domino's sugar by bludgeoning the sugar into pieces using bags filled with spotted owls and conflict diamonds and then forcing unpaid 4-year-olds in an abandoned asbestos mine to polish the granules to whiteness.

Oh, and to top it all off, I get to pay for my groceries and leave under the disapproving glares of all the people carrying their reusable "I used to be a plastic bottle!" tote bags. I should get a leather bag that says "I used to be a self-righteous hippie!" on it and see how they react to that.

Why are non-stick silicone baking products not?

When I decide to make myself a batch of muffins, my thought process generally doesn't go something like "You know what would be really great right now? Eating the top third of a muffin and leaving the other two thirds a destroyed ruin of crumbs scattered across the kitchen counter." I mean, if you want to market your muffin cups as "environmentally responsible" or "pretty colors!" or "deter your crazy aunt from eating the muffin papers" (Seriously, my aunt does this. No joke.) or something like that, fine, but don't market them as non-stick unless they actually prevent things from sticking to them.

I really wanted the rest of that muffin, dammit.

Why can't people make proper lolcats?

My friends and I were definitely early adopters of the lolcat meme. While none of us can claim to be the 4chan/SA/wherever forum trolls who were actually in on the ground floor, we were making harblz jokes long before they made it into the mainstream. I also count myself among what I assume has to be the relatively tiny population of people who have done actual academic work (to the extent that any of my work really qualified as such) on the subject of cat macro. Anyway, where I'm going with all this is that I don't think it would be unreasonable to claim I am a pretty decent authority on the subject of lolcats.

From this position of relative expertise, I would like to lodge a strong complaint about the quality of the lolcats which have been appearing on ICanHasCheezburger lately. Crafting cat macro isn't really all that difficult. You take a picture of a cat and put a white, block text caption on featuring idiosyncratic but internally consistent spelling and grammar. That's it. It's not hard. But people still have trouble, so allow me to list a few things which are not acceptable lolcat components:

• Speech bubbles
• Motivational poster or 'Breaking News!' formatting
• Full sentences
• Proper grammar/spelling/capitalization
• More than about 10 words

Srsly. Iz not diffkult, akshully.

Oh yes, and one more minor point with which people seem to struggle: IF YOUR MACRO CONTAINS ANY ANIMAL WHICH IS NOT A CAT IT IS NOT A GODDAMNED LOLCAT. K. THX. BAI.

Why do people use their phones as tiny, obnoxious boomboxes on the subway?

I wouldn't want to hear your goddamn lousy music played over the best stereo system in the world, and I definitely don't want to hear its tinny, MIDI-fied tones spewing out of some bright pink keyboard phone perched on your shoulder. If you can afford a cell phone, you can afford a pair of ear buds, especially when you factor in the cost of medical bills for getting a pink keyboard phone extracted from one of your nostrils.

Why would it be technically illegal for me to inflict grievous bodily harm upon the employees of Crate and Barrel?

An unfortunate consequence of moving to a larger apartment has been the necessity of purchasing more and/or more tasteful furniture. I'm pretty sure it's not anyone's favorite activity as it's generally known to be a process filled with out-of-stock items, multi-month delays and missed delivery windows. But really, even among the forest of incompetence that is the home furnishing industry, Crate and Barrel has managed to be a relative sequoia.

Seriously, it's not a difficult business model. People come into your store and purchase items. You then deliver those same items to a location of their specification at a later date. Pretty much every internet merchant and catalog company has managed it. Montgomery Ward and Sears, Roebuck & Co. were doing it pretty successfully before the advent of computers, cars and Strom Thurmond. So it doesn't really seem like it should be possible to, to choose an example completely at random, deliver only the top half of an end table but no legs. Or, in another 100% hypothetical example, to deliver two random spare shelves in a wood-pattern that you didn't even order and then have your two dubiously literate delivery guys try to convince the customer that said shelves are definitely his armoire (which they pronounce "armory"). And then it would be totally beyond the realm of any possibility that some surly employee would take the position that, not only was he not going to refund your delivery charge, he was going to have to charge you an extra delivery fee for providing you with the missing parts from the first order. I mean, anyone who did that would deserve anything that he got and no jury in the world would convict a man who, hypothetically, walked to the store and bludgeoned the aforementioned employee to death with the vertical supports of the desk that they delivered instead of the sides of the bookcase whose shelves they did manage to deliver.

Not that I'm saying anyone did any of this. This is all purely a thought exercise.

To change the subject completely, does anyone have a tarp and a shovel I can borrow?

Why do modern food critics sound like a Markov generator seeded with the works of Pierre Schlag?

I live with two roommates, one of whom has the worst taste in television of anyone I've ever met. A particular favorite of hers is Top Chef, and I have come to a grudging acceptance of it as the best of a bad lot. I'm even sometimes willing to watch for minutes at a stretch because a) I'm kind of a foodie who finds the preparation interesting and b) I keep hoping for some sort of horrifying stand mixer accident to sever someone's arm and produce a kitchen-based reenactment of the opening sequence of Deep Blue Sea (Great movie). In fact, with time I might even be able to get the number of minutes I could stand to watch into the double digits, but for one thing: the critics.

The critics they bring in fill me with the most unspeakable rage. They insist on peppering their reviews with insane and meaningless terminology like "deconstructionism" and "discursive context". Sometimes, when they're really on their game, they mix pretentious jargon with the impromptu verbing of words! I actually heard one guy say that he didn't think that the dish "adequately contexted the ethos of the challenge." Oh? Really? Is that so? /stabsselfineye

It's bad enough when academics deploy this sort of bafflegab while discussing their abstract and questionably useful fields of study. To do so when describing food is absolutely inexcusable. As a species that has been eating things for quite some time now, we've managed to develop a whole vocabulary to describe the practice. I suggest you use it and leave the dynamics of interbeing and monological imperatives in Dick and Jane to the philosophers.

Why do people feel that yelling slogans at random buildings in midtown Manhattan is going to accomplish anything?

Today, I had to return a cable box to my erstwhile cable provider. (Free advice: Never, ever, ever get your cable from RCN, unless you don't need audio when it rains or has just rained or looks like it might rain or isn't raining at all but could be raining if some governmental organization spontaneously decided to seed the clouds with silver iodide.) I didn't figure it'd be a very noteworthy expedition. Turns out I was wrong.

When I arrived at the nondescript 3rd-avenue office building which contained the RCN returns center, I discovered to some irritation that its entrance was surrounded by angry protesters chanting slogans. I politely navigated (read: curtly elbowed) my way to the front door, persuaded the police cordon that I was not a bomb-throwing anarchist and was able to return my equipment. However, I was struck by this apparently inexplicable decision to picket that particular edifice. The protesters were shouting anti-war slogans, but nothing I saw on my walk through the corridors or on subsequent googling gave me any reason to believe that the occupants were part of our foreign policy apparatus, and even if they were, I somehow doubt that anyone with any actual authority would be relegated to some obscure building in Midtown East.

I suppose they just chose the building because it had some quasi-federal agency and was conveniently close to wherever the picketers originated, but really, at that point it seems like you might as well just stay wherever you started and shout at passers-by rather than schlepping somewhere else. Since the underlying assumption seems roughly to be "Hey, if we annoy the Deputy-sub-undersecretary for Honduran Agricultural Statistics enough, he's going to get on the horn to the Joint Chiefs and demand immediate withdrawal from the Middle East," you can probably just hope to catch him out walking around on his lunch break. I mean, it's not as if that scenario is any LESS plausible.

Besides, if you set up shop in your own front yard, then you could have lawn chairs and a cooler of beer, which might help soften the disappointment of your inevitable failure.

Bonus point: If you're demonstrating for peace, maybe the chant "They said 'Get back' we say 'Fight back!'" is not the best choice. Also, it's stupid.

Why do people match their ties and pocket squares?

Pocket squares are supposed to be a way to add an extra dimension of individuality to the generally highly regimented world of men's suiting. You're free to pick any of hundreds of different folds, it need only pick up some color from your shirt, tie or jacket, even a secondary one, and you simply have to follow the same pattern- and texture-matching rules as you would with any other article of clothing. Or, if you are hopelessly confused by all that, you can just stuff a white handkerchief into your pocket in a disarrayed lump and it will look decent enough.

Rules and protocols aside, the pocket square is really an opportunity to demonstrate your sartorial flair. This is why I can't understand the increasingly widespread practice of matching your pocket square to your tie (and I don't mean matching as in complementary, I mean matching as in identical). Your choice of pocket square is supposed to demonstrate your discerning taste and eye for color; matching it to your tie merely demonstrates that you can buy a box with two things in it. It makes your whole outfit look awkwardly scripted and makes you look like the worst sort of nouveau riche (Shut up, Lushy, I refuse to italicize that).

In case you don't believe me because I'm just some guy on the internet, allow me to back my point up by noting that Lord Peter Wimsey once described the practice of pairing tie and pocket square as "highly unfortunate." I defy you to find a more authoritative source than that.

Why does Miller Lite have a 'Vortex Neck'?

Advertising low-end light beer has to be pretty difficult. I mean, your product is essentially very dilute, stale-bread flavored swill. Trying to get around this basic fact often leads to some pretty dubious advertising gimmicks. For an amusing 10 minutes or so, google the phrase "triple hops brewed" and watch the internet's beer nerds hysterically decrying the meaninglessness of this claim. Or consider the fact that Bud Light's entire ad campaign of late has been based on the fact that their beer can be drunk. Really, it's sort of easy to understand why most of the ads omit the product entirely and go straight to misogyny and/or slapstick humor.

But Miller has really outdone themselves with their newest offering. It's called the Vortex Neck and, in case you haven't seen it, it's a beer bottle with rifling along the inside of the neck. It's not really clear what this is supposed to do; and even Miller seems not to know since nothing in the commercials or the website offers even a ghost of an explanation for how some helices will improve your beer drinking experience.

I could list problems with Miller Lite for a long time, but I really just don't think that 'inaccuracy as a projectile over long distances' would have made my top 200. Maybe they need to screen their focus groups better or something.

Why is college football hellbent on destroying itself?

College football is pretty awesome. Its offenses and defenses lack the sterile homogeneity of their professional counterparts, it is full of ancient traditions and rivalries, and it fills fans with a borderline-psychotic fervor that cannot be equaled by even the most rabid of NFL fans. Plus, sometimes Michigan loses to App. State.

Unfortunately, PAC-10 commissioner Larry Scott appears not to agree with this particular view, since his announcement Saturday that his conference was looking to poach either half or all of the teams from from the Big 12 was essentially the sports-administrative equivalent of lowering the cow into the velociraptor paddock. Now the Big 10, PAC-10 and SEC are starting in on a desperate feeding frenzy as all the outsiders look on with horrified expressions and ominous feelings of doom. (Boise State is Ian Malcolm, TCU is Alan Grant and Notre Dame is Dennis Nedry.)

16- and 22-team megaconferences dilute brands, ruin rivalries and will probably confuse the BCS so badly that we'll end up with 3 teams in the national championship game, two of which are USC (the third one will be the Mets). This is what happens when you put people from Harvard in charge of anything.

Introducing our first guest blogger!

I will be abroad for the next two months, and while they do have the internet in foreign countries (I'm told), I might have better things to do than hate everything. Never fear, I'm sure I will build an arsenal of topics for future blogging.

In any case, Barnes will be taking over blogging duties from Monday, and he will shoulder the main burden until I return triumphantly in August. He has sworn to break all the guide-lines, so prepare for profanity, personal attacks, and knock-down, drag-out fights in the comments. I hope you enjoy it.

His name is actually Cholmondeley. And if you don't know how to pronounce that, we both hate you.

Why is the Roland Garros iPhone app inferior to all the other Grand Slam iPhone apps?

It's sort of hard to explain, but the ease of navigability--especially in the draws--is far inferior. This is mystifying to me, as the app is developed by IBM, just like all the other Slam apps. Perhaps it is because they must provide Roland Garros radio in two languages.

But I don't care. The other, previous apps have been excellent and a boon to those of us who are awkwardly attached to professional tennis. This one is awkward and mystifying.

So, get it together, developers.

Why do people use "angst" when it is inappropriate?

It really has quite a specific meaning. And whether you side with Kierkegaard or with Heidegger, you can agree that most people use it incorrectly.

It is not merely ennui, nor is it merely anxiety. Still less is it anger. We have all those words, and we should use them when appropriate.

Angst is deeper and more existential. It is not directed outwards. You cannot have angst about your cat. Well, maybe teenagers can, but only in a stupid, hyperbolic, and illiterate way.

Why does Porsche make a sedan?

I saw it today and could not believe my eyes. Fortunately I had eaten very little breakfast.

I refer you to the standing Porsche/two people/picnic basket rule.

Note: I know they make an SUV. I have blogged about it (see link above, which is now fixed and no longer sends you to that guy reciting the Fresh Prince intro as if he were Gandalf, whoops). That I could explain away by the overwhelming if inexplicable popularity of SUVs.

But a Porsche sedan? That says, "Hello, world. No, I really am not cool enough to own a Porsche, which is why I bought this semi-practical but also insanely stupid vehicle instead of a comparably priced and/or equally luxurious real car. I do not understand the purpose of Porsches and I almost certainly have a bald spot, but am having such a fake midlife crisis that I think a sedan will cure it. I should probably get help."

Why does Robin Söderling ruin everything?

Again?

What is your deal, Robin Söderling? You are funny-looking, and you knock out major players in major tournaments only to implode spectacularly and make the final a pathetic farce.

Get out.

(Note: I correct the spelling because not even this schmuck deserves to have his name spelled incorrectly. I would like to point out, however, that ignoring diacritics in this case is not an American problem but rather a sporting problem. In no language, for instance, does the Roland Garros website provide "Söderling.")