Gobama

Be great tonight.

My pool of friends has no deep end

Last month I found out that my friend Sarah's new housemate Anna is good friends with my fellow expat buddy Pat here in London. They went to school together. That school was Boston College, for which I find it hard to forgive them.

Last week I found out that my friend Bess' husband Joel knows my ex-girlfriend's high school friend Meredith. They met in the dogpark when their dogs enjoyed sniffing each other in that disgusting way that doglovers strangely enjoy and the rest of us try to ignore.

Last night I saw an old friend named Kalyani. I met her last year when I moved to London. A guy on my C'ville soccer team (go Donnybrook FC!) had a friend named Marisa in London and passed me her contact information when I moved over. She went to school in London with Kalyani, who has since moved to Beijing but was back in town for graduation. I met her friend Anna at drinks and we discovered that we each know Sulove -- she goes to school with him; I know him via my friend Conor who hung out with him when they both lived in New York. Anna and I decided to text Sulove the same exact message at the same exact time ('hello my brown friend ... how are things?'). Having no way to know that we'd met, he sent us both text messages asking if we'd just sent him a message that said 'hello my brown friend ... how are things?' as he'd received identical messages from two friends. Also, he said to answer the question he was hale and hearty. Anna and I replied separately that we'd sent him that exact message, and each included cryptic references that referred to the responses he'd sent to the other person. Sulove was upset and confused. Afterwards I explained the whole thing and we made plans to hang out when his friend Youyoung -- who I met once in New York with Conor (we all went to this Bulgarian club that I took Sarah too a couple of weeks ago when I was back in New York), and then saw again in Berlin for the Radiohead show in July -- is in town. Apparently they know each other.

O'Biden

Maybe Biden isn't so bad. I like the idea of Big O choosing a running mate based on principles and not their home state. I like that Joe is verbose and says the wrong thing sometimes so that The Daily Show and Colbert Report will continue to have plenty of fodder.

Made the transition from completely underwhelmed to slightly bitter neutrality.

Winning the arms race

WE WON!

CNNsi medals table: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/olympics/2008/medals/tracker
BBC medals table: http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/olympics/medals_table/default.stm

Ooh, something's not right there. Why would a gold medal be worth more than a, er, bronze? A medal is a medal. Crazy brits.

Better go to the tiebreaker...

Al Jazeera medals table: www1.aljazeera.net/english/sports/olympics/medals-tally.html

Yessssss.

Carnavore

Big party weekend in London, this. Biggest of the year in fact. Today and tomorrow are the Notting Hill Carnaval, where relocated urban residents of Notting Hill circa 1985 come back and have a massive party in the neighborhood of their gentrificaters (made up word).

I love jerk chicken.

Completely underwhelmed

Biden?

In a perfect world it would've been Bill Richardson, but putting two minorities on the ticket just isn't possible in this day, which is sad. It's been frustrating enough to see muted support for Obama from those who would benefit from his view of the world. That must be racialist. Which I hate.

Biden doesn't have any idiosyncrasies that rub me the wrong way apart from occassionally speaking just because he loves the sound of his own voice. When I see him I don't cringe like I do when I see Tim Kaine (not sure why -- it happens when I see him on TV and in person. I was on a plane with him once and cringed for the whole 2 hour flight). He's not unlikeable, like Hillary. I guess he's just ... old ... and from Delaware. Nice that he'll definitely pull Delaware!

Also, the timing seems poor. Would've got more bang on a Monday and after the Olympics.

Evan Bayh would've been cool. He's a Hoosier.

That was me

From my colleague's blog:

So one work colleague just visibly pissed off another work colleague and the room became very quiet right afterwards.

Way to go buddy, it's like daddy just hit mommy at the dinner table in here...

No hard feelings Gabe.