I fucking hate taxes. No, I don't mind giving up the money, I just really, really, really fucking hate all the bureaucracy and math involved. First of all, I had no clue about what I had to do in order to "file my tax return". I didn't even fucking know what that expression meant. Where am I "filing"? Who returns what? So I go over to irs.org, and ( Read more... )

Mike's sister was in town so we decided to meet up. We had dinner at il Panificio on Charles street. I walk by that place everyday and I had always wanted to give it a try, and only now I had a good excuse to do so. It was actually my first social outing since mid-November, so it was cool to get out of the cocoon for a change. She invited me to go ( Read more... )

John Kerry's house, which is just around the corner from my apartment, has been heavily guarded by Men in Black sitting inside spotless, jet-black SUVs with tinted windows ever since he became the front-runner for the Democratic nomination. Francois, the Lebanese-Brazilian who works at the corner convenience store, said they're actually secret ( Read more... )

I was on my way back home from the lab when, at the Kendall T station, some old geezer I remember seeing around campus started talking to me, seeing as how we were the only people on the platform. He started asking all these questions about my education/career and, since I didn't want to be rude, I answered them but didn't ask anything about him. ( Read more... )

In the seemingly endless stream of junk mail I've been getting, I happened to come across a census form sent out by the city of Boston. I casually glanced at the form (which was addressed to the previous tenant), and then skimmed over the "instructions", which came in a mind-boggling 11 foreign languages. The usual French, Italian, Vietnamese, ( Read more... )

Ain't love beautiful? I had to do a little matchmaking today, setting up breeding mouse pairs in new cages today. I'm telling you, those mice up in the animal facility have it fucking made. Where else can a rodent not only live his whole life free from predators and disease, but also have exclusive breeding rights over one or more mates? Shit, I'd ( Read more... )

Thanks to grubi for the idea ( Read more... )

I picked up a copy of "Welcome Interstate Managers", the latest album by Fountains of Wayne. Seeing as how co-band leader Adam Schlesinger is/was in Ivy, one of my favorite bands, and also wrote one of my favorite songs, "That Thing You Do", from the soundtrack of the movie of the same name, I decided I should at least give his newest endeavor a ( Read more... )

??|ce I left Brazil, I have kept in touch with my friends through e-mail written in our distinctive dialect of Portuguese, with somewhat creative spelling and grammar. With each e-mail, I tried to further distance our way of spelling from the standard Portuguese. I thought that in this respect, I was unique. For instance, let me loosely translate ( Read more... )

Check out this e-bay auction.Now before you get too outraged (or excited), let me point out that she is not selling herself, but rather selling the act of pretending to be your long-distance girlfriend ( Read more... )