MLS: The Best and Worst Club Names in Major League Soccer

I ♥ Wondolowski

As a Profession Baby Names Consultant, I wanted to weigh in on sports teams' names, specifically, American Soccer. I've been subscribing to MLS Live all year, and indulging in and binging on matches from all over the country. I've noticed that if I'm describing some of these games to non-soccer-following friends, they're often amused or astonished by some of the NAMES of our teams. So, partially for the benefit of my friends unfamiliar with these teams, here are my opinions of the very best and worst club names for upper division soccer clubs in the U.S.

Many of the MLS teams have generic soccer club names, like FC Dallas or D.C. United. I respect these names (even if "Football Club" should really be "Soccer Club," right?) Clubs with names like "Colorado Rapids" or "LA Galaxy" sounds more traditional Americanny, and again, I like them. These are the ones that stand out to me for their awesomeness or their horribleness:

5 Best MLS Club Names:

5. Philadelphia Union - My friend Mr Aha's choice. "Such an abstract concept to cheer for at a sports match," he texts me. It's similar to United, which has old world footballing cred, but with a bit of patriotic flavor.

4. Chicago Fire - Naming your sports team after a famous disaster that your city suffered is highly encouraged. And the old school firefighter-inspired badge as their logo is very classy.

3. San Jose Earthquakes - See above, except tenfold... Because earthquakes continue to be a massive fear in the bay area. (Remember that the 1989 one happened during a World Series game between the two bay area baseball teams.) 

2. Sporting Kansas City - I don't know why the Kansas City Wizards rebranded with this name, but I love it. The retro / anglophilic "Sporting" seems almost ironic, but this excellent team owns it perfectly.

1. Real Salt Lake - Beautiful juxtaposition of European naming style (Real Madrid) with distinctive American place name. My favorite MLS name.

5 Worst MLS Club Names:

5. Houston Dynamo - What even is a Dynamo? Power? Houston strong! Houston powerful!

4. Montreal Impact - or, Impact de Montréal. I don't know if "impact" seems less dorky in French, but it has no poetry in English. We are a soccer club and we will slam into you, creating an indentation!

3. Chivas USA - Guadalajara-owned expansion team took Guadalajara's nickname, which means 'goats.' However the generic location - USA - makes it hard for Southern Californians to root for them. Goats USA? I propose they move to Las Vegas and change their name to Chivas Las Vegas. Then people will assume they're sponsored by top-shelf Scotch whiskey.

2. Columbus Crew - Their logo has always reminded of A Clockwork Orange or The Warriors, and the whole thing has an awkward feel of mid-westerners trying to act street (rather than the working-class thing I'm assuming they were going for... Their club logo just needs an Indian and a cowboy.)

1. New York Red Bulls - The unambiguous winner. What could be more horribly American than a product placement in the club name? Even if you had never heard of the energy drink, the idea of a bull that was red as a team name is lame. But it's association with taurine makes it creepy beyond redemption. Change your name, New York! If MLS gets a second NYC franchise, and it takes the awesome old fashion NY soccer club name Cosmos, how depressing will your name be in comparison?

These are just one man's opinion. I apologize if I've mocked the name of the club you support. Comments / discussion welcome. And opinions about names of other footballing teams from elsewhere also encouraged.

Itwaslost GOOGLY SEARCH TERMS 2011

It's been a while since we've rounded up the search terms that led people to this blog. So without further ado, straight from our Statistical Department, is the top ten itwaslost-bound Google search terms:

1. curling jokes
2. firewhiskey recipe
3. michael jackson castration
4. purple flag
5. firewhiskey
6. itwaslost
7. famous non drivers
8. flag of the world
9. michael jackson castrat
10. black ram

In case you missed the significance, HOORAY! Michael Jackson's testicles are NO LONGER the top search idea leading people to this blog! (That and 'purple flag' were 1 & 2 for years.) That means, to give audiences what they want, we need to start producing more content about curling humor and Harry Potter recipes. Now, for fun, I went thru the long list and picked out the funniest search terms that led people here:

a hunks pennis
albino alligator for sale
ample mammaries
castracted the 14 tears old boy cause i love him so much
cloud fat woman shape
dirtiest panties
drinking corn whiskey
girls taking hookah pictures
great white marijuana sewer gator myth
grindelwald release a handkerchief
how to make corn likker
how to make corn liqueur
how to mix corn licquour
james welsch porn
man on manatee
rhymes with smurfs
shocking gelded men pics
song socks with sandals
the dirtiest panties ever
vapid innocuous euphemisms
very preggo
we found it .org
"dugong jokes"
"get a fucking job is all"
"giant tree trunk piece of ass"

Those are all culled from only the last month. This website has written about such a wide range of strange topics over the years, it's always surprising to see what people are out there looking for, and hopefully we helped them find it. M.M.M. suggested that "Man on Manatee" be the name of the next album for The Manna Tease. I love the concept of "corn liqueur." If we figure out how to make it, you'll read it here first. Also, I'm psyched that people are finding this website from searching for words that rhyme with 'smurf.' Good morning!

List of Real Names

I was inspired by Gail Collins in the New York Times real-namedropping in her recent editorial:

...Perhaps if we talk about it long enough I will get a chance to point out once again that Representative Connie Mack of Florida, who surprised everyone by announcing Friday that he would not run for Senator Bill Nelson’s seat in 2012, is actually named Cornelius Harvey McGillicuddy IV.

And then, today, we watched Eddie Izzard's classic "Engelbert Humperdinck" sketch in Dress to Kill, where he dwells at length on Gerry Dorsey's name change. So, I will now compile a growing list of REAL NAMES of actors, celebrities, politicians, and anyone else who has an interesting real name. (Please leave suggestions in the comments.) I'm generally leaving out people with stage names, pen names or rap names whose real names aren't especially interesting or hilarious (like Samuel Clemens or Robert Zimmerman), and leaning more towards people whose birth names could be career killers, or are just vaguely entertaining to learn.

Tom Cruise - Thomas Mapother IV
Ben Kingsley - Krishna Bhanji
Muhammad Ali - Cassius Marcellus Clay, Jr.
Woody Allen - Allan Konigsberg
Snoop Dogg - Cordozer Calvin Broadus
Jon Stewart - Jonathan Stuart Liebowitz
Kirk Douglas - Issur Danielovitch
Lauren Bacall - Betty Joan Perske
Billy Holiday - Eleanora Fagan
Jodie Foster - Alicia Christian Foster
Gene Simmons - Chaim Witz
Judy Garland - Frances Ethel Gumm
John Wayne - Marion Morrison
Mel Brooks - Melvyn Kaminsky
Albert Brooks (actor) - Albert Einstein
Martin Sheen - Ramon Estevez
Kiefer Sutherland - William Frederick Dempsey George Sutherland
Sting - Gordon Sumner
Charlie Sheen - Carlos Estevez
Pat Benatar - Patricia Andrzejewski
Larry King - Lawrence Zieger
George Orwell - Eric Blair
Cary Grant - Archibald Leach
Winona Ryder - Winona Horowitz
Alan Alda - Alphonso D'Abruzzo
Engelbert Humperdinck - Arnold George “Gerry” Dorsey
Gov. Bobby Jindal - Piyush Amrit Jindal
Elvis Costello - Declan Patrick MacManus
Demi Moore - Demetria Guynes
Bob Hope - Leslie Townes Hope
Bono - Paul David Hewson
Lady Gaga - Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta
Michael Caine - Maurice Micklewhit­e
Miley Cyrus - Destiny Hope Cyrus
Anne Bancroft - Anne Italiano
Whoopi Goldberg - Caryn Johnson
Vanilla Ice - Robert Van Winkle
George Sand - Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin
Baron Corvo - Frederick William Serafino Austin Lewis Mary Rolfe
Mitt Romney - Willard Mitt (Milton?) Romney
Buster Posey (Giants catcher) - Gerald Dempsey Posey III
Pelé (Soccer player) - Edison Arantes do Nascimento
Fatboy Slim - Norman Cook
Al Pacino - Alfredo Pacino
Marquis de Sade - Donatien Alphonse Francois Sade
Jack Palance - Volodymir Ivanovich Palahnuik
"Baby Face" Nelson (Gangster) - Lester M. Gillis
Chuck D - Carlton Ridenhour
Nero (Emperor) - Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus / Nero Claudius Drusus Germanicus
Pablo Neruda - Neftalí Ricardo Reyes Basoalto
Erykah Badu - Erica Wright
Groucho, Chico, Harpo, Zeppo & Gummo Marx - Julius Henry Marx, Leonard Marx, Arthur Adolph Marx, Herbert Manfred Marx & Milton Marx.
Reince Priebus - Reinhold R. Priebus

List: Words That Rhyme With 'Smurf' DEFINITIONS - Third Set

Here is the next skimpy-baker's dozen of Words that Rhyme with 'Smurf' DEFINITIONS. Only eight or so more of these sets of definitions, & you will have the worlds longest list of definitions for words that rhyme with 'Smurf.' Get out your nonsense-doggerel-writing quill pens & get ready to RHYME WITH 'SMURF'!

zhurf - A single galosh, only half as many galoshes than are needed for galoshing.

krurf - 1) A mansion full of racist people; 2) A yurt containing one or two racist people.

ghurg - 1) To keep the ghurgs at bay, hold a ghurg up to another ghurg - the infinite reflection of ghurgs reflecting ghurgs will terrify the ghurgs until they un-ghurg; 2) a ghurg with a massive vaginal opening.

mnurf - A mental trick to remember to die on time.

schmurf - 1) A Teutonic Shmurf; 2) Exclamation exclaimed every third beat of a schmaltzy waltzy.

thurf - A recreation enjoyed by lithperth on boardth at the theathide.

pyurf - 1) North Korean fashion; 2) a popular North Korean fashion gossip blog written by Kim Ung-Urf.

jrurf - Gentle, kind, good-natured asshole, squirrel-killing motherwanker, pen thief, & lighter-fluid squanderer.

frurf - 1) A fruit fly assassin; 2) Intrigue; 3) a pulp genre of fruit-fly assassin intrigue novellas popular in 1830s Madagascar, which was later suppressed by Madagascar’s brutal Islamic hippie dictator Le Bhutte-Ole.

thlurf - Debilitating laziness not to look up a definition in a dictionary.

Complete DEFINITIONS for Words that Rhyme with 'Smurf' so far.

Art above by Mr Olaf Mary. He has a new art website & activities blog. More about those anon. He is currently working on illuminations to my poem "A Poop Deterred."

List: Words That Rhyme With 'Smurf' DEFINITIONS - Second Set

Back to business--; the second set of DEFINITIONS for our list of a hundred words that rhyme with 'Smurf'.

hurf - a violent procreative action a grurf will inflict upon its comrade grurfs. The grurf will impale its horn into the rival grurf’s gnatlike wings, then through another grurf’s wings (up to fifteen in a row has been observed by naturalists), twist it all about, & then sit there in a heap until they begin to mold. This is the only way a grurf can reproduce naturally in the wild.

iouyurf - 1) a very tall sunflower said to resemble a young beardless James A. Garfield; 2) Debt that has been temporarily paid with the seeds from the iouyurf flower as a “placeholder;” 3) The oil pressed from the iouyurf seeds, which can be boiled and poured from a large cauldron onto the heads of one’s debtors.

oourf - onomatopoetic word referring to the sound a grurf makes when it is hurfing.

glurf - a species of yuppie who is not actually allergic to wheat gluten, but goes around telling everyone he or she is, making impossible special requests to caterers or restaurants, and diagnosing all of their friends as gluten-intolerant also.

furf - 1) a stock tip; 2) a gambling tip; 3) a sex-position tip; 4) a tip about how to successfully cheat at clurf.

sklurf - 1) an immigrant who has accidentally immigrated to his own country; 2) the name of the “chinatown” district of sklurfs, usually located in the center of the city they are originally from.

hururf - a grunt of approval from the town council of Scott, Arkansas, when it has unanimously voted to adjourn for the day and take their kids to Chuck E Cheese’s.

scurf - a nasty disease caught on alien spaceships, usually caught when there is an insufficient supply of human baby blood to provide the crew.

jjurf - 1) the bells of freedom ringing from coast to coast, eagles soaring, flags waving, and an old soldier saluting a parade; 2) despair.

curf - 1) a thing or no-thing, something or not something; 2) a very large investment project costing more than a curzillion dollars.

List: Words That Rhyme With 'Smurf' DEFINITIONS - First Set

Now getting to business--, after we released the long-awaited list of a hundred words that rhyme with smurf, many of you have been waiting to get down to doggerel, but were frustrated by the lack of definitions to most of those words (ones in common knowledge or common sense excepting.) Here we are proud to release the first set of DEFINITIONS for our "Words That Rhyme With 'Smurf.'"

vurf - 1) a tiny truck, 2) sexual slang used by tiny truckers when referring to their tiny trucks.

brurf - 1) a savage, stupid and often violent politician, rarely taller than 4’11”; 2) any of the insults hurled by the short violent politician.

iurf - slang for “swagger,” meaning roughly “fresh swaggering gait: half butterfly, half horse fly, and half C.P.E. Bach.”

nrurf - 1) to be so drunk that one has lost one’s curf; 2) the woman one wakes up next to after being in a state of nrurf.

ulurf - naked gutteral howling, like a banshee with a tracheoctomy.

shlurf - not as big as a shurf, but far more fun.

drurf - 1) herbal cure for ringworm, side effects include premature balding, lack of sexual desire, itchy colon, breast engorgement, and death. 2) the same medicine taken recreationally.

shurf - 1) A Slippery Nipple without the Irish Cream or the sambuca; 2) the state of anger one experiences after ordering a shurf.

clurf - 1) game played by the upper hierarchy of the clergy involving lingerie and betting on dice; 2) the lingerie used in the game of clurf after it is so thoroughly soiled that it must be hand-washed in holy water.

durf - any of the followers of John Durf Scrotus (b.1265 - d.1278), the Scottish philosopher who exposed the Middle Ages as a bucket of hogwash.

List: Words That Rhyme With 'Smurf'

As promised, here is a list of one hundred words that rhyme with 'Smurf.' The research for this project was done on the white board in my parents' bathroom. The '011 is already on track to be a smurf year, so we need these rhyming words. I will give you the list now, and provide definitions for these words in the coming fiscal quarter. God bless us!

vurf
brurf
iurf
nrurf
ulurf
shlurf
drurf
shurf
clurf
durf
hurf
iouyurf
oourf
glurf
furf
sklurf
hururf
scurf
jjurf
curf
zhurf
krurf
ghurg
mnurf
schmurf
thurf
pyurf
jrurf
frurf
thlurf
murh
iourf
quaurf
jlurf
schlurf
grurg
shurf
yurf
kburf
dhurf
guurf
stourf
blurf
phrurf
vrurf
scurf
tlurf
skrurf
gnurf
prurf
hoourf
thrurf
khurf
ugurf
iourf
slurf
jhurf
stlurf
phlurf
nmurf
gurf
hrurf
xyurf
eurf
urf
gyurf
uurf
sturf
zurf
mlurf
wurf
trurf
psurf
sclurf
plurf
burf
scrurf
kurf
crurf
quourf
iaurf
wlurf
wrurf
leeurf
lourf
phurf
vlurf
psyurf
llurf
klurf
flurf
mnemnurf
whurf?
nlurf
geourf
dlurf
ourf
strurf
kowurf
lurf
qurf
xurf
srurf
seurf
kyurf
schurf
rurf

List: 141.5 ways to spend $141.5 Million of Meg Whitman's Money

Good morning! This list will keep growing until it reaches 141.5. Meg Whitman just wasted $141.5 Million of her own money to lose by twelve percentage points in the California gubernatorial race to Jerry Brown. I'm open to suggestions on other ways to spend her money. (We're estimating pricing from Amazon & google, &, of course, eBay.)

1) Buy a copy of Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventure's in Wonderland ($5.95 for the CreatSpace edition) for 23.8 Million 9-year-olds (which is probably more 9-year-olds than there are in the whole country).

2) Better yet, buy the cool Robert Sabudo Pop-up version of AAiW ($19.13) for 7.4 Million 9 year olds.

3) Smoke it.

4) Buy 141.5 million lottery tickets (which may give you slightly better odds of getting your money back than of beating Jerry Brown.)

5) Amazon sells a set of 7 fake mustaches for $2.99, which is $0.43 a mustache. THAT'S ENOUGH FAKE MUSTACHES FOR EVERY RESIDENT OF THE USA!

6) A decent Bachelor Party stripper goes for around $200. You can buy strippers for 707,500 Bachelor Parties!

7) Cut out the Benjamin Franklins from 1.415 Million $100 bills, & make an epic collage

across AT&T Park.

8) Looks like a basic civil war re-enactment shirt gos for around $17.99, $5.65 for a good hat, but you need $150 for some sort of replica rifle. That will outfit 814,904 soldiers. The First Battle of Bull Run had less than 70,000; The Second Battle of Bull R

un had about 100,000 soldiers. You see what I'm getting at, you could properly bankroll the re-enactment of a dozen or so major Civil War Battles.

9) Attach a bidet ($50) to 2.83 Million toilets, greatly increasing the cleanline

ss of buttholes in the East Bay Area.

10) I found 20 acres of foreclosed land for sale for $17,663 in San Bernardino County. If you could buy 8,011 acres together, that's enough to succeed & be governor of your own little state. (You may need the soldiers from #8 to accomplish this.)

11) Buy a tractor (7 grand) for every resident of Orinda, California (with three thousand tractors left over.)

12) Buy an iPad ($552) for almost everyone in Sacramento, California.

13) Build the new Berkeley Art Museum ($95 million) with $46.5 Million leftover t

o buy half of a Jasper Johns painting (buy the good half, of course.)

14) Smoke it.

15) A bottle of absinthe from St George's in Alameda goes for $59.99 at its cheapest. You could buy a bottle for almost everyone in Nevada.

16) A dildo is about $7.95, which would outfit every

woman and girl in Connecticut with a shiny new dildo.

17) Sly & the Family Stone's album "A Whole New Thing" can be found used for $3.83, which would greatly improve the morale of every resident in California.

18) A fake rubber rat is $4.95, which is just what everyone in K

ansas could use.

19) A Uniflame WAD820SP 34in Wide Outdoor Fireplace with Slate Mantel with Copper Accents ($154) for everyone in San Francisco.

20) Pay back MF Global, "the world's largest broker of exchange-traded futures and options," the $141.5 Million it lost from unauthorized wheat trading in 2008.

21) Okay, I think I'm getting this right: The width of a penny is 1.4mm. So 141.5 billion pennies stacked would be 10,107 kilometers or 6,280 miles, which is the

distance from Scottsbluff, Nebraska, to Rapid City, South Dakota.

22) To fund a new

Johnny Appleseed project, an Apple Grow-A-Tree kit is $3.5o. That's 40.4 Million freaking apple trees!

23) Or alternately for a Christine O'Donnell project, there are 300 deadly nightshade (atropa belladonna) seeds in a $5 pack. In the unlikely event that all of them sprouted, that would be 8.5 billion plants. With the right potion, that could easily turn the earth's population into newts.

24) On February 13th, 2008, Eliot Spitzer paid $4,300 to spend the night with the hooker Ashley Dupré. He could have kept sleeping with her every night until about March 2098.

25) [suggested in the comments] she could buy her own island and become queen of that island.

26) [suggested in the comments by Gottlob K. Bremselhäcker, M.A. (Oxon.) ] The average cost of making a Hollywood movie is at least $106 million at last count. Use $141 million to make a movie in which a billionaire retired Silicon Valley executive throws a huge part of her personal fortune into running for governor of California. After bombarding every conceivable media with a many-pronged campaign of a scale never seen before in statewide politics, she unexpectedly loses the race by a wide margin to a scrappy veteran politician, but in the process learns the important lesson that money isn't everything, in politics or in life. Sharp political satire in the mode of "Primary Colors," "Wag the Dog" or "Bulworth" but with a touching, cathartic finale in which the protagonist makes amends with her illegal immigrant former housekeeper she attempted to turn into a political prop. Critics will say it is entertaining but somewhat improbable.

27) Speaking of movies, why not make a shot-by-shot remake of Metropolis (1927), which cost 5.3 Million Reichmarks at the time, approx. $200 Million in today's currency, but you could save some money by casting Mel Gibson as Freder.

28) A Bell 429 Heliocopter costs $4.865 Million. You could buy one for me & twenty-eight of my friends.

29) You can't buy a narwhal, & you can also no longer buy the Avenging Narwhal Playset action figures from Accouterments, so, therefore, you can buy infinite narwhals with $141.5 Million.

Only 111.5 left...

I'll keep updating the post with more ideas. Leave suggestions in the comments! We will get to 141.5! If you want to read the boring ways she spent it, read here.

Sexting List: "of places we still need to fornicate this summer," Part Two: 61-100

The second & final installment of my series of text messages sent to my friend (with artwork from a drawing she left lying around my house.)

List of places we still need to fornicate this summer

61) Graveyard,

62) Crematorium,

63) Columbarium,

64) Dance floor,

65) Wells Fargo Wagon,

66) Mount Olympus,

[At this point, she texts me "thata 'umber 70". There was a lost text message containing her entrées for 65-69, which I received later but will include here.]

65) Broadway,

66) The Pound,

67) Safeway,

68) Academy of Sciences,

69) On a real red wagon,

67) Fortress of Solitude

68) Grant's Tomb,

69) The sky,

70) The sea,

71) The countryside,

72) The Hanging Gardens of Babylon,

73) The Leaning Tower of Pisa,

74) Calvary,

75) David's Temple,

76) Hell,

77) In the music video for "Whoomp! There It Is"

78) In the powder room,

79) The WC,

80) In the can,

81) The little girls' room,

82) The john,

83) Circus,

84) Library,

85) Bus,

86) Third rail of the G Train. The G Train, Nermal!

87) Abu Dhabi, Nermal!

88) In the closet,

89) Facebook,

90) MySpace,

91) Friendster,

92) Napster,

93) AOL,

94) Inside,

95) Outside,

96) Baseball diamond,

97) The docks,

98) The ceiling,

99) Outland,

100) The far side.

Part One, 1-60, here.

Sexting List: "of places we still need to fornicate this summer," Part One: 1-60

This was sent as a series of dozens of text messages to my girl earlier today. Spaces demarcate a new text - - It followed a reference to a lyric in R. Kelly's song "Echo", "Sex in the morning / Sex all day," as an attempt at oneupmanship. She supplied the artwork.

List of places we still need to fornicate this summer:

1) Your car,

2) A barn

3) In a forest,

4) Abattoir,

5) Outer space,

6) Prison,

7) Underground,

8) Zeppelin,

9) Top of a skyscraper,

10) Madhouse,

11) Cheap motel in New Mexico,

12) The White House,

13) Mel Gibson's backyard,

[At this point, she texts me "i'm peeing my trousers"]

14) Macy's,

15) JC Penny's,

16) A radio station,

17) High up in a redwood tree,

18) Cave,

19) Desert,

20) Your boss's bed,

21) My boss's bed,

22) On the internet,

23) In cyberspace.

24) Online,

25) Sexting,

26) The moon,

27) Uranus,

28) Middle ages,

29) The Renaissance,

30) The Enlightenment,

31) The future,

[At this point, she texts me "ooooh! cue julia child squeal"]

32) In Julia Child's kitchen

33) In the beginning,

34) In media res,

35) Happily ever after,

36) On the battlefield of love,

[She contributed the next six]

37) On the lincoln memorial,

38) On the pieta,

39) On tour,

40) On a boat,

41) On a plastic bag island,

42) On mel gibsons chopper parked in his backyard,

[At this point, I text back "Mmm, yes please"]

43) Kurdistan

44) Boys' locker room,

44) The arctic,

45) The antarctic,

46) The anti-antarctic,

47) On the Disneyland tea-cup ride,

48) In animal costumes,

49) In sports mascot costumes,

50) In Mel Gibson's hovercraft,

51) On a desert island,

53) On a dessert island,

54) In a museum at night,

54) In a museum at noon,

55) At the beach at high tide,

56) At the beach at low tide,

57) Invisible,

58) In the road,

59) In a subway tunnel,

60) In a Subway restaurant,

To be continued...

Song of 28

Yesterday, after twenty-eight years on earth, & after several victorious games of indoor bowling, Miss Grainne Proinseas & I sat down around a hookah & split a forty ounce bottle of Budweiser, & wrote upon this large piece of paper some accumulated wisdom. I find this advice may be helpful not just to those who have not yet reached this weathered age, but also to our elders who may have forgotten. (Clicking on the image will make it full-screen.)

Also, for your convenience, I have uploaded it as a book on Scribd.

Song of 28

Three Years Ago: "List"

Premiering, today--, hello readers--, I would like to spearhead the initiative for a new segment called Three Years Ago. We never properly celebrated that this website weblog has been posting for more than three years. So as an extended anniversary party, I'll be RE-POSTING from the exact past, EXACTLY TO THE MINUTE THREE YEARS LATER, the post I had posted three years ago. This post from May 27th, 2006, at 3:51pm, was simply called "List".
______________________________________________________________

1) Girls who think Sandinistra is the best Clash album.
2) Snow in May.
3) The 1976 elections.
4) Neil Diamond’s "Soulimon".
5) What Hawthorne thought of Melville.
6) A googly during a Sticky Wicket.
7) The deleted ending of Dr. Strangelove.
8) Popcorn cooked over a fire.
9) When, during the last Calvin & Hobbes anthology, Rosalyn (the babysitter) beats Calvin at Calvinball.
10) David Byrne dancing with a lamp.
11) White tea with steamed rice milk.
12) Turquoise found in the hills of the Nevada desert.
13) New York hipster drone music played at deafening volumes on the Hurdy-Gurdy.
14) Good flan.
15) Lily Langtree.
16) The names of Al Franken’s books.
17) Half Moon Lake in Desolation Wilderness.
18) Petzl Headlamps worn at inappropriate times.
19) J.D. Salinger’s longevity.
20) People who smile to themselves at you.
21) Joan Baez singing both parts of conversational songs.
22) Jokes about Sven & Ollie.
23) People who are humble about having read all of Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queen.
24) Sexagenarians who think The Man Who Wasn't There is the best Cohen Brothers movie.
25) Poor students who would prefer to spend more than $50 on a bottle of good tequila.
26) Mimosa’s Witnesses.
27) My friend who said she saw Wagner’s Siegfried on acid with her father.
28) John Denver’s Greatest Hits, Volume Three.
29) Children who use the word “obtuse.”
30) Life-long vegetarians.
31) Tan M&Ms in a wine glass.
32) Toughannock Falls.
33) The first few chapters of First Chronicles.
34) Houris.
35) When Elizabeth Bishop interrupts & corrects herself in her own poem.
36) Seeing an old friend in a new light.
37) Having a large number of dimes.
38) Jokes about what’s black, white, and/or red.
39) Corn Lily.
40) Shakespeare’s Troilus & Cressida.
41) Butterbeer & Firewhiskey.
42) Caleb Burhans.
43) Merlot drinkers.
44) People who take black & white photos on digital cameras.
45) Jimmy Buffet’s Jamaica Mistaica.
46) Reading Robert Burns out loud with an American accent.
47) Christmas caroling on Halloween.
48) The one who gets to play 4’33” during a John Cage Music Circus.
49) David Bowie as Andy Warhol in Basquiat.
50) Eskimo women chanting.

List: My Futuristic new phone

I've been spending the last few days configuring my new phone, which is futuristic by my standards, but embarrassingly old-tech to people who have fancier blackberries or iphones than me. It's completely sidetracked me from the other important projects I was getting done this week, like putting pretty pictures next to my poetry. I'll chronicle my reactions in list form.

-The reason the e-mail didn't work was because they thought I had a different kind of handheld device than the one they sent me.
-They charged me sixty dollars in twelve hours by accident, because they hadn't activated the unlimited data plan we requested yet.
-The people at tech help are kind & patient, but they do tend to always assume the costumer is doing something stupid.

-The Google Maps application on this phone has a new tool called "Google Latitude". Have you ever heard of this? It's like the Marauder's Map in Harry Potter, where you can see where everyone is in the castle. So you can add "friends", & see where their phone is, or I guess, wherever they last logged into Google Maps. Is this the future? Wives will always know when their husbands are leaving their mistress's houses because they'll see the little dot moving around on the map. Not hiding from anyone myself, it doesn't bother me. And it shows my blip way over on Prince Street, so it would be hard for a stalker to use it very accurately. Plus, I tend to often leave my phone at home, & am a flaky phoney any way. You can never track me! So far Mr Mary is my only friend, his blip in Santa Fe, soon our blips will be reunited on a plane to Bucharest. Anyone else want to be my marauder's map friend?

-I also like that I can use my facebook application to set up my address book, so the friend profiles are linked with the info, & their facebook picture comes up when people call.

Now I'm caught up with 2006 technology I'm ready to PENETRATE THE PHONE-O-SPHERE. This probably doesn't mean I'll be more reliable & easier to get in touch with tho.

It Was FURLOUGHED

The Board of Lost of It regretfully announces, due to bulging backstock & a budget deficit, the blog itwaslost.org will be FURLOUGHED from between the hours of 3am, Saturday, April 25th, & 11am, Monday, April 27th. This economy has hit everyone hard, but we believe that the American blogging industry is the greatest in the world. We thank our loyal customers for their support.

Mr Quill introduced me to google analytics, where we can track the website's statistics. An amazing feature is learning what google searches people have typed in to arrive at your website. I only set it up a week ago, but the top five most common for this week were:

1) laura kirilova chukanov
2) famous non-drivers
3) itwaslost
4) michael jackson castrato
5) curling jokes

But there's several hundred others. Some of my favorites:

-"delphinic fettishes"
-barack & obama & wedding & ceremony & text
-bop shu wop
-did michael jackson lose his viginity to cliona
-does anyone have a recipe for millet cookies?
-dude, this party is dead. you got any of those whippits left? i gotta cracker and some balloons in my car.
-got your scrotum in my mouth tea bag tea bag song ithaca
-pirelli's elixir original label for bottles
-sock fettishes
-we west forever life forever for the grabber

There were a ton about Michael Jackson's balls, Laura Chukanov (Miss Utah), Obama's 'stop smoking NOW' letter, & purple flags. Thank you, world, for googiling interesting things. We apologize for the furlough - - - - - - - times is hard, times is hard...

12 Bits of News from Hindoostaan

1. A buffalo has been cloned. Yes, read the story here, folks.

Apparently, "India...has the largest population of the best buffaloes in the world. However, the percentage of elite animals is very low and there is a need to enhance the population of these buffaloes. The cloning technique is expected to address this gap."

Yes, so it shall.

In other news, the buffalo has died of pneumonia.

2. मैं हिन्दी में यह कंप्यूटर पर लिखना सकती हूँ

3. "Pak" did it.

4. Hot water heaters are called "geezers"

5. The concepts of yesterday and tomorrow are expressed by the same word (कल)



6. I have been watching these giant Indian fruit bat flying fox creatures from the roof. They are, like, huge.







7. I do not yet have the ability to move images captured on my camera obscura to any sort of electronic numerical integrator type device; hence the pirated images you see above. I will also treat to you to a handsome collage of Gayatri Devi, Maharani of Jaipur:


8. My 26th Birthday was celebrated with a cake, upon which was written "Happy Birthday Allen!"

9. Word is going round my Indian family that "my father is a rich and famous dentist."

10. Went to buy bedsheets for Ravi Shankar with my pal Krishnaji, student of Raviji. Attended dinner hosted by Raviji in Delhi, delivered bedsheets. What was I doing at a dinner with Ravi Shankar?? Good g-d.

11. The plumeria and jasmine are in full bloom.

12. Phone booths are called STDs.

www.itwaslost.org New Years Resolutions

I have been thinking hard about how to make 2009 a super special year. It has often been noted that slight changes in behavior can have major long-reaching consequences. There's no better time than during Berkeley, California's cold dark winters to attempt to improve ourselves. If other itwaslost.org contributers wish to edit this blog-post & add more resolutions, I invite you to make it an open discussion.

-Stop going to see movies starring Philip Seymour Hoffman. I don't know why I kept making that mistake in 2008.
-Throw a mint julep party. I have a humongous bottle of Maker's Mark hidden in my apartment, which I bought a long time ago to throw a fabulous mint julep party. Why haven't I done this yet?
-Homeless people make me uncomfortable. I think I'm going to stay the course on this one.
-Pay more attention to ladies' butts. You ladies don't get enough credit for your butts. Occasionally, I hope to notify a lady if she has something special.
-Drink more beverages out of tall glasses. A tall glass of water. A tall glass of juice.
-Sing more hymnody in small groups.
-Date more white girls.
-There are several cocktails I wish to invent. Specifically, my idea for the Long Thailand Iced Tea, which would involve some combination of sweetened condensed milk, iced tea, & all the booze in Long Island.
-Jesus Christ walked on American Soil.
-Write a Text Message Novel. This has already started, more on that anon, but I would like to see this project thru.
-Female Professional Midget Wrestlers.
-616 Blog Posts. You probably saw this coming. That's like two a day. Are we up to it? The mathematical gods demand it.
-A new format for this website. I'd like it to be more magazine style, like the Huffington Post, with different sections, like Fashion & Architecture. We are looking at the horizon of greatness.