Jesus fucking christ. Argh. Charles and I are watching the All-Star game right now. The broadcast comes back from break, and the announcers tell us (paraphrasing) "a banner's just been unfurled in the outfield" -- and indeed, a large vertical stripe of fabric, seemingly hand-painted, has been draped over a billboard suspended above the outfield, and it's got the letters HHRYA.com painted on it -- "I have no idea what that's supposed to mean, but clearly someone went to a lot of trouble to do it."

Hmm. Some sort of guerilla website promotion at the All-Star game? Intriguing. It's a little weird that the FOX broadcast would give it exposure, but baseball games, even the All-Star game, consist of an awful lot of airtime to fill with chatter. The HHRYA website is slammed, of course, and the Coral cache won't load, but it gets far enough that I can see it's trying to get content from textamerica.com. Somebody's moblog? Very interesting.

Well, it's been a few more minutes, and now I can load the site. And you know what? It's a fucking viral marketing campaign for a fucking Chevy. Rewound the Tivo -- hey, whaddayaknow! The banner was draped over a Corvette ad. And the greenscreened batter's box ad for that at-bat was a Chevy billboard. Yeah Joe Buck, I bet you had NO FUCKING IDEA what was going on with that banner. Must be some kind of authentic piece of underground culture asserting itself upon Major League Baseball! Yup, that's the only explanation. Look at those jagged letters! Look at the amateurish fabric! Yes, somebody is really desperate to share their love of an UPCOMING GODDAMN AUTOMOBILE. And they want you to upload your pictures and music to their site! Or something! And become part of the HHR community! WOW! Are tattoos available?

Man oh man, Chevrolet. I already disliked you for the design abomination that is and has been the Corvette. But now I outright hate you. Fuck you, Chevy. Don't try to relate to me, don't demand my attention, and most of all don't try to fool me. Stay out of my goddamn culture. You make cars. You are not a community, you are not an aesthetic, you are not a way of life, and now you are not a brand I would ever consider purchasing.

anybody looking for a good, moderately-priced olive oil should try trader joe's extra virgin california estate olive oil. tommy bought a bottle the other day on one of our semi-frequent trips to the suburbs, and it is delicious! personally, it is the best olive oil i've had outside of italy. (imagine i just said that last sentence in a truly obnoxious, high-pitched voice.)

speaking of italy, and, er, stuff, i've been meaning to write more about the cooking class at galileo. it was pretty great, and the pasta we "made" for lunch was amazing. but the best part happened like this: when we are all sitting around before the class started, a youngish, very indie-looking guy (be-bearded, wearing a canyon tshirt (somewhat popular d.c. band that broke up a year or two ago), etc) came in and sat down next to us. throughout the entire class, we all chatted, but no one introduced themselves or said what they did or anything. that came later on, as we were eating. tommy and i were chatting with indie guy dave, and earthy motorcycle-riding nasa-worker andy (i think that was his name), and since we were about, oh, SEVENTEEN glasses of wine in at this point, everybod was a bit talky. we asked dave what he did, and he said he was in a band. (of COURSE he is, i judged mentally.) andy asked what kind of music they played, and he said, oh, kinda country-rock. what band, i, vaguely curious, wondered.

oh, he said, son volt.

oh, i said, and went back to gorging myself on pasta.

then i looked up. excuse me, what did you say the name of your band was, i asked again.

son volt.

i looked over at tommy and, i hate to say this, but i kind of snorted. not because i wanted to be rude - not at all - but because, um, holy hell, son volt! what the fuck, band dude, what...er, the fuck. craziness.

have you heard of us? dave asked us.

dur. no. i have been living in a black hole void of outerspace since i was 11 and am allergic to music. of course i have heard of son volt! anyone with even a PASSING interest in alt-rock has heard of son volt. DUDE. SON VOLT!

turns out dave is in the reformed, new-member version of son volt, since they broke up a while back and everything. but DROWN! and JAY FARRAR! the album drops today, it turns out. i have no idea if it's any good, but i'm pasta-friends with DAVE. drummer dave! who was very nice, to boot. so now i have a responsibility to check it out.

(additionally, dave was wearing that canyon t-shirt and everything, so i took a stab in the dark and asked if he used to be in canyon. the way he explained why he was wearing his old band's tshirt: uh, i got stuck with all the merchandise after we broke up, so, you know...uh huh, drummer dave, uh huh. in his defense, he WAS going to a cooking class, so he could have reasonably expected the average age to be 7900 and no one would have inquisitioned him about his band. i know i thought the whole class would be full of old people putting pasta dough in their hair. but rock n roll people like to cook too!)

Strangely enough, I first heard about this last night on a teaser for Fox News at 10, DC's most ridiculously sensationalist news program. But hey! It's actually interesting: a study has found that some drugs prescribed for Parkinson's Disease can prompt compulsive gambling behavior; some subjects also indulged excessively in alcohol, sex and food.

It's too early to say for sure, but there's an obvious explanation that presents itself. Parkinson's is primarily a deficit in the dopamine-related systems in the brain. Dopamine is important for motor function, but it's best known as the key neurotransmitter in the brain's system of rewards. The proverbial rats that'll push an electrode-stimulating button until they starve to death? That electrode is wired into their dopaminergic neurons in the nucleus accumbens. And cocaine and methamphetamine are dopamine agonists (meaning they increase the system's activity). It's the feel good neurotransmitter! (I guess that'd make serotonin the feel-good-about-yourself neurotransmitter.)

So why do these drugs induce excessive gambling instead of excessive consumption of the drug? A strong possibility is that their mechanism of action relies on potentiating dopaminergic activity. The drug doesn't replace dopamine, but it makes it more effective. So when patients participate in activities that naturally light up their brains' reward centers, they get a bigger kick than they normally would. Let's just hope the folks conducting the study keep their subjects away from the crack.

tommy got linked by kevin drum for a post of his over at BTD. i should also mention that boifromtroy (who has guestblogged for wonkette) hit on him over the weekend at the black cat. blog royalty, here we come!

This John Tierney column, which seems to seriously flirt with proposing that hackers be given the death penalty, is almost too stupid to believe. But I couldn't resist giving it attention anyway, and wrote some more about it over at BTD.

Some moderately entertaining bullshit.