German is still chugging along, although the grammar is finally starting to get the better of me consistently. Meanwhile, consistent ultimate frisbee twice a week has been great.

Faith got into the post-bac program at UConn, so we’re going to be moving to Hartford in August. That means it will be a lot tougher next year to go to all those extraneous lectures I love so much. Oh well.

I got the new Coldplay album, X&Y, today at Target. Coldplay makes a big deal about being sort-of anti-corporate, or at least anti-exploitation. But I opened the CD to find an insert with a code for downloading a b-side track, Animals, supposedly a Target exclusive. The website for redeeming this code (hosted on the Coldplay site) said something about using IE, with all cookie settings wide open and no other cookie-blocking programs, being highly recommended. Of course, I ignored that and downloaded the song from Firefox. Unfortunately, the song is in Windows Media format. Worse, iTunes can’t convert it to mp3 or play it at all. And it’s copy protected, so I actually can’t even play it in Windows Media Player, since apparently not using IE made it so I didn’t have the right cookie to be able to retrieve the license when I try to play it, and now my code is invalid so I can’t download it again properly.

If this isn’t an improper use of business influence to try to control a bigger piece of the media industry on the part of Microsoft (with the collusion of Target, and Capitol Records, and Coldplay), I don’t know what is. It’s seriously messed up to have an exclusive downloadable song that forces fans to not only use Windows Media (and not iTunes), but also requires Internet Explorer.

I also got the DVD set of the Daily Show’s Indecision 2004… we rented the first disc, and decided to buy it so we would have that and the other two discs to watch over and over. Stephen Colbert’s son-of-a-turd-miner, grandson-of-a-goat-ball-licker monologue is probably the funniest thing I have ever seen in my life, ever, in my whole life. Seriously.

Anyhow, I checked out 4 Philip K. Dick books to get started on my science fiction reading list, which will hopefully be one of my 4 fields for the graduate program.

Reading: Galapagos

Listening: Barenaked Ladies, Weezer

Watching: Elektra, Indecision 2004