Never Gonna Sing an Opera
HAHAHAHA OH MY GOD
I haven’t laughed this hard in a long time, holy hell.
Freaking 0:48: “You’re heart’s been ACHing buuuuuuut!…you’re too SHIIIIIIII to SEYIIIT!”
I was crying, man. I was crying.
Buckets: They Pail in Comparison
I am BORED so you get SURVEY.
Try not to HATE ME.
Put your music on shuffle and answer these with the song TITLE.
If I had a band, it would be called:
Ray of Light
When I die, my headstone will say::
Pick Up The Phone [that’s kinda creepy for a headstone]
At my wedding, in my vows I will say::
Can It Be You?
If i could kill someone, I would kill them with::
Find You [??]
When I leave high school, I will be most remembered for::
Txt Msg Brkup [hahaha]
When my boy/girlfriend makes me mad I tell him/her::
Yeah [hahahaha]
When I party I like to::
Africa [I totally Africa all the time. You’ve seen me.]
When People send me annoying forwards, i scream::
Revolution
When I go out, people look at me and think to themselves::
I Want [there has never been a more inaccurate survey answer in the history of the universe]
When hanging out with friends, we like to::
Breathe [yeah, that’s generally a good activity to partake in]
Now… answer these with the first line of the song:
This morning your alarm went off at 5:00 AM. you say::
So I was sitting there in the bar and this guy comes up to me and he said “My life stinks.”
Then you get up and get in the shower and sing::
What would you do if I walked up to you and I told ya how I feel about ya now?
When you cant find your favorite shirt, you yell::
It wakes me up at night
After getting dressed you go downstairs and::
Been there, done that, messed around
You then get a bowl of cereal. It is stale. You say::
Shut up train I’m trying to sleep [damn trains making me get up and delivering me stale cereal]
After eating your stale cereal, you head out to catch the bus. The bus already left. You curse and scream::
Hey! Where’s the drum?
So now you have to walk to school. The Populars drive by you and say::
I’m feeling sexy and free
You reply angrily::
You’re beautiful and that’s for sure [huh. Well.]
They drive off and scream::
You can find me in the club, bottle full of bub [alrighty then]
You try to cross the street, but can’t because of a car wreck. You say::
Hello darkness, my old friend
So you walk all the way back to the other side of the street to the store. You go in the store and ask the clerk::
We’re in trouble so we move on the double, we move on the double, we move, yeah [apparently I suck at asking questions]
He replies::
We have fallen down again tonight
You give him a strange look and say::
Wake up kids, we’ve got the dreamers disease
Then you get some chips, but you cant find your money. You mumble::
Far away; the ship is taking me far away
The clerk says::
She takes her time with the little things [bitch, chips are serious business]
You angrily walk out of the store saying::
Life’s the same I’m moving in stereo [life’s the same, except for my chips]
So… You go to the Starbucks across the street and a lady asks you::
Hey Judy, get Trudy
To which you say::
I’ve known a few guys who thought they were pretty smart
…When your cellphone rings. It’s your friend. She says::
The test begins, now [OH SHIT]
You tell her::
Hold on to me as we go, as we roll down this unfamiliar road
So she gets mad and hangs up the phone. You yell::
You got the touch! You got the power!
People start to think you have problems, so you tell them::
You’re gonna drive me crazy
The man at the counter tells you::
I apologize, seem to have arrived on what items in my bag from your house. [what]
So you say::
I hope this old train breaks down so I can take a walk around
Then you leave the Starbucks. You can cross the street to get to school now:
Here we are so what you gonna do
You get across the street and a rabid dog starts to chase you; you scream::
I wanna wake up in a different city
When you get away, you say::
When I first saw you something stirred within me
You finally get to school. Teacher wants to know why you’re late.:
I like where we are when we drive in your car [THIS SOUNDS SO INAPPROPRIATE OMG]
She don’t believe you. So you tell her::
They say the eyes are the windows of the soul, but i love all the little dark holes in your body bag. [oh god why]
She still does not believe you, so she sends you to the principal. He asks::
I’m holdin’ on a rope got me ten feet off the ground
So you reply::
I’m not a rocket scientist
He thinks you are getting an attitude so he tells you::
It’s like forgetting the words to your favorite song
Then sends you to detention. You mumble::
When we were young the future was so bright
Sitting in detention… You meet a butch girl named Ashley. She asks you::
I hopped off the plane at L.A.X
You look at her in horror and tell her::
Listen to yourself you’re a hot mess
Then move to the other side of the class. She Yells::
We drop beats that’ll crack your cranium
There are people in the back trying to sing. It’s really bad. You tell them:
Some girls won’t dance to the beat of the track
They get mad and say::
You make me happy, whether you know it or not [hahaha]
So you just go to sleep for the rest of the time. When you wake up, it’s 4:00. You look around and say::
Come down from the mountain, you have been gone too long
You ask the teacher why he didn’t wake you up, and he says::
I’ll be your light, your match, your burning sun [what is with the inappropriate teacher relationships I’m having here?]
So you run all the way home. Mom wants to know where you’ve been.:
Used to know a boy
But she don’t wanna hear it. She grounds you and you say::
Call it magic, call it true
So she yells back::
There’s something here between us [yeah, weird anger]
You stomp up to your room and trip over the top stair; you yell::
Pass the Grey Poupon [hahaha]
Then you go in your room and text your lover. He/she texts::
All my life, oh yeah yeah
You get mad and say::
And the morning light was breaking
Then he/she says::
I woke up late again this morning [guess he missed the breaking light]
Then you get so mad you throw your phone at the wall, and it breaks.:“
A court is in session, a verdict is in
You sit in your room for the next 4 hours saying:
Open up the champagne, pop!
Your mom thinks your going crazy, so she says::
I’ve been here before, but always hit the floor
You look at her crazy, then walk away saying::
Nowhere, yeah we’re going nowhere fast
She throws a frying pan at you and you scream::
She’s just a friend, you see
She yells Back::
To everything (turn, turn, turn)
So you storm upp to your room again and say::
Strumming my pain with his fingers
Then you get in the shower and sing::
You gotta know, I’m feeling love
Then before you go to bed you pray that::
I know I took the path that you would never want for me
Aged Cheese
We’re in that time of the year where a lot of my friends have their birthdays. My birthday’s not until February (or I guess I could say my birthday was back in February, whatevs), but whenever I see a lot of other people getting a year older, it always makes me think about myself getting older as well.
I actually don’t have any issues with the idea of getting older (at least, I don’t have any issues with it yet, haha). In fact, I kind of like the idea. I like the idea of amassing your own stock of memories and your own history and your own place in all of the events that have happened since your birth. I like the idea of being able to say “I was there” or “I remember that” about events that keep getting pushed further and further into history due to the passage of time.
I mean, in a few years I’ll be 30 years old. Even with just that amount of time, I feel like I have so many memories and so many experiences. That’s really cool to me. And what’s even better is that I’ve got this blog, this record of (some of) my experiences that I can go back and look at and read when I’m older and want to “revisit” my life.
So yeah. I like the idea of getting older. I’m not afraid of it.
Along that same line of thought, I’m really excited about the idea of growing old alongside my wonderful husband. My soulmate. My grandma and grandpa on my dad’s side didn’t have the perfect relationship by any means, but whenever I think of living a life alongside someone, my mind always goes back to them. They were married for more than 50 years and were able to grow old together. I like that. I like knowing that our relationship is strong enough to plan on experiencing the rest of our lives together.
And that makes me super happy.
JaBoodle
I don’t know if it’s because I’m super sleep-deprived right now or what, but I thought this was hysterical.
Gotta love Jaboody Dubs.
Excer
This is a really good article discussing just how much daily exercise a person needs to do in order to “offset” the damage done by how much time they spend sitting during the rest of the day.
Actually, the main message of the article is that we can’t really “undo” the nasty effects of sitting for eight hours a day. One study is cited as showing that 60 to 75 minutes of planned daily exercise might be enough, but not necessarily enough to bring about any additional health benefits. But the main point the article wants to make is that a good rule of thumb for health is to simply “sit less, move more”—no matter what that movement is. Which I can definitely get on board with.
WELL I GUESS IT’S WINTER
Brr.
IT’S ONLY OCTOBER, CALGARY, WHAT THE HELL.
I think it’s supposed to be a rough winter.
BIG BOTTOM, WASHINGTON
There is no logical reason why I find this so incredibly hysterical. It’s not even that funny, but oh my god, I just spit an M&M across the room laughing at Satan’s Kingdom, Massachusetts.
I like to imagine it as the polar opposite of Magic Kingdom.
Or it’s like where Satan keeps his summer home, but wants to make sure it still sounds badass so he named it “Satan’s Kingdom” instead of “Casa de Satan” or something. OH MY GOD, “Memphistopheles” would be a great town for Satan in Tennessee. That’s where the Southern Satan chills.
(Southern Satan is like 40 times worse than regular Satan.)
“Booger Hole, West Virginia.” That’s redundant.*
I think Minnesota just really wants to be a new Canadian province. Minnetoba.
Oklahoma must just really suck at coming up with original names. The capital is Oklahoma City, after all. Or some smartass Oklahoman (is that what they’re called?) was like, “OMG U GUYZ, let’s make a town and call it “Okay” so that when anyone has to address anything to someone in that town, they have to write “Okay, OK” ‘cause that’s hysterical, am I right?”
Pig, Kentucky sounds like it’s the cultural capital of Redneckia. It’s where you go to get the full experience. “Now, y’all are gonna wanna cross the border into Booger Hole to get all them cheap West Virginia beers, then head on down to Smartt, Tennessee, ‘cause that’s where the university is what teaches you how to spell good. But watch out for Southern Satan, ‘cause he’ll make yer Chicken Bristle right sure up.”
Plenty Bears, South Dakota probably has more bears than the whole state has people.
*I have a goddamn vendetta against West Virginia. Why the hell is it shaped like that? It pisses me off, man. Such an ugly shape. If you were shaped better, West Virginia, maybe Satan would summer home in you instead of Massachusetts, did you ever think of that? WON’T SOMEBODY PLEASE THINK OF THE SATAN!?
Tune-A-Licious
I’ve been doing something a little bit different with my music as of late. Rather than picking my “Favorites +” (4+ star songs) playlist and randomly shuffling that, I’ve been just randomly shuffling my entire music collection—which is a little over 4,000 songs—and just going from there.
I’d forgotten just how many of my songs were tied to very specific moments or time periods in my life. Hell, I bet I can put my tunes on shuffle right now and pull out half a dozen or so that are very closely tied to specific times in my life.
Let’s do it.
- Pompeii by Bastille: the end of fall semester 2013. That was probably my favorite semester of school I’ve ever had for quite a few different reasons, and I remember listening to this son a lot that winter, especially around finals.
- Best I Ever Had (Grey Sky Morning) by Vertical Horizon: haha. Um. My first breakup song. I happened to download it around that time in 2007 and it’s pretty much the perfect “feel sorry for me” song, so yeah. Sitting in my dorm room and crying! Fun times!
- Anything on the Black Eyed Peas’ “Monkey Business” CD: senior year of high school. This was one of the few CDs I owned at the time and would play it in the car driving to/from school.
- Anything on Ashlee Simpson’s “Autobiography” CD: the summer between the last year of high school and the first year of college. I still wasn’t too into music and so this was another set of songs that got played over and over and over again that summer.
- Without You by David Guetta and Usher: Marana, AZ. I moved down there in December 2011 to be with my mom, and it was the most isolated place I’ve ever been. I remember listening to this song in my room before/after doing my 10-mile walking loop every single day.
- Helplessness Blues by Fleet Foxes: Marana, AZ. See above.
- Say It Right by Nelly Furtado: summer 2017. This was always on the radio and I’d listen to it on my way to/from work (Wendy’s).
- Maps by Yeah Yeah Yeahs: fall 2008. This was one of our frequently-played Rock Band songs in the house with Sean and the others, so it always brings up memories of all of our shenanigans whenever I hear it on shuffle.
- Some Nights by Fun.: Tucson, AZ. Not only did I download this song while down there, but there are quite a few lyrics in it (e.g., “Well, that is it guys, that is all – five minutes in and I’m bored again/Ten years of this, I’m not sure if anybody understands/This one is not for the folks at home/Sorry to leave, mom, I had to go/Who the fuck wants to die alone all dried up in the desert sun?”) that summarized my feelings about why I was in Tucson in the first place and how much I wanted things to change.
- Good Life by OneRepublic: my very brief but awful time in London, ON. I downloaded this song like a day before I moved there and I listened to it a lot while I sat in my dorm room because I was too anxious to do anything else. I also listened to it a lot in those two aimless months between moving back to Moscow from London and moving down to Tucson with my mom. It still causes a very bittersweet pang in my brain whenever I hear it.
- Dildo by Interactive: hahaha. Band friends and basement Rock Band parties/orgies. I miss you nerds.
Homestar Runner
So I’ve spent the past hour or so watching old Homestar Runner stuff because my stupid brain wants me to think it’s 8th grade again when Homestar Runner was the coolest thing on the internet.
Not to knock Homestar Runner at all…it still is pretty cool even after all these years.
Favorites:
- The Luau
- Fluffy Puff Commercial
- Meet Marshie
- Cheat Commandos
- Cheat Commandos…O’s
- Stunt Double
- Teen Girl Squad (all of them)
We really were super obsessed with this in 8th grade. There was actually a kid who turned this in as an English essay once (though he was joking around; he did actually write one of his own and gave it to the teacher after class).
BLAH BLAH BLAH DRAWING BLAH BLAH BLAH
While I don’t like like this one, I like it more than the last one I posted on here.
Absent
ABSENTEE BALLOT, BITCHES!!
I know I can’t post a picture of the actual filled-out ballot, but surely this is okay, right?
Just doing my part in a very important election. Even though my vote won’t count because Idaho.
Week 40: Kendall’s Tau
Let’s do another measure of correlation, shall we? Kendall’s tau!
When Would You Use It?
Kendall’s tau is a nonparametric test used to determine, in the population represented by a sample, if the correlation between subject’s scores on two variables equal to a value other than zero.
What Type of Data?
Kendall’s tau requires both variables to be ordinal data.
Test Assumptions
No assumptions listed.
Test Process
Step 1: Formulate the null and alternative hypotheses. The null hypothesis claims that in the population, the correlation between the ranks of subjects on variable X and variable Y is equal to zero. The alternative hypothesis claims otherwise (that the correlation is less than, greater than, or simply not equal to zero).
Step 2: Compute the test statistic, a z-value. To do so, Kendall’s tau must be computed first. The following steps must be employed:
- Arrange the data by the ranking on the X variable (smallest to largest ranking).
- Begin with the first Y rank corresponding to the first (smallest) X rank. If the Y rank for the smallest X ranking is larger than any Y ranks corresponding to any of the other X ranks, note it with a “D” for discordant. If the Y rank for the smallest X ranking is smaller than any Y ranks corresponding to any other X ranks, note it with a “C” for concordant.
- Once this is done for all comparisons for the first Y rank, move on to the second Y rank and repeat steps 2 and 3 until all ranks are considered.
- For each Y rank, sum the number of Cs and the number of Ds. The sum of all the Cs across all rankings gives you nC, the total number of C entries, and the sum of all the Ds across all rankings gives you nD, the total number of D entries.
Compute Kendall’s tau as follows:
where nC and nD are as defined above and n is the total number of data points in the sample.
The test statistic itself is calculated as:
Step 3: Obtain the p-value associated with the calculated z-score. The p-value indicates the probability of observing a correlation as extreme or more extreme than the observed sample correlation, under the assumption that the null hypothesis is true.
Step 4: Determine the conclusion. If the p-value is larger than the prespecified α-level, fail to reject the null hypothesis (that is, retain the claim that the correlation between the ranks in the population is zero). If the p-value is smaller than the prespecified α-level, reject the null hypothesis in favor of the alternative.
Example
I want to see if there’s a correlation between my ranking of 12 of my songs from 2009 and the ranking of those 12 same songs in 2016. Let X be the ranking in 2009 and Y be the ranking in 2016. Let’s use α = 0.05. I actually have no idea if this will end up a positive or negative correlation, so let’s go with the most general hypotheses:
H0: τ = 0
Ha: τ ≠ 0
The table below shows the rankings of the 12 songs for 2009 and 2016, as well as the method to obtain the sums of Cs and sums of Ds.
nC = 42 and nD = 24
Kendall’s tau and the test statistic:
Since our calculated p-value is larger than our α-level, we fail to reject H0 and conclude that the correlation between the ranks in the population is not significantly different from zero.
OCTOLIST
- What the hell is this sculpture, Calgary?
- This screaming is basically my internal dialogue. All the time.
- Edit: Jesus Christ, internet.
- What the hell is this song? This is great.
- Penis jokes? Penis jokes.
“Now I don’t know who lives here but it’s TIME TO WAKE UUUUUUUUUUP!”
Gotta love the internet, man.
Gotta love the internet.
BOOM
I’m not wearing pants.
I WILL WALK FOREVER
Soooo I’ve already walked more miles this year than my 2015 walking goal. And it’s only September!
I wonder if it’ll be possible to get to 3,500 miles this year. I guess we’ll see!
HAVE SOME GARBAGE ART
YOU’RE WELCOME>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAY MACARENA
Hahahaha, man, I wish I would have finished this.
Aneel was one of my best friends in high school, which of course meant I had to make fun of him using Flash. I also made a parody of “Goodnight Moon” about him, ‘cause what else are friends for?
Edit: here’s a Strawberry Clock from back when I was all about the Clock Crew. I miss pretending to know how to Flash.
Any garbage can become a blog post if you just be l i e v e
I’m still chugging away at my blog archives—getting everything organized, formatting my posts so that I can (hopefully) one day get them printed and have a hard copy of them, all that fun stuff.
Tonight, I took a quick break from this and decided to just look through all my old blog pictures for fun.
I’ve posted some weird-ass pictures.
Presented without context (to make it even weirder):
Yeah.
Week 39: Spearman’s Rank-Order Correlation Coefficient
Let’s talk about the Spearman’s rank-order correlation coefficient today!
When Would You Use It?
The Spearman’s rank-order correlation coefficient is a nonparametric test used to determine, in the population, if the correlation between values on two variables is some value other than zero. More specifically, it is used to determine if there is a significant linear relationship between the two variables.
What Type of Data?
The Spearman’s rank-order correlation coefficient requires both variables to be ordinal data.
Test Assumptions
No assumptions listed.
Test Process
Step 1: Formulate the null and alternative hypotheses. The null hypothesis claims that in the population, the correlation between the scores on variable X and variable Y is equal to zero. The alternative hypothesis claims otherwise (that the correlation is less than, greater than, or simply not equal to zero).
Step 2: Compute the test statistic, a t value. To do so, Spearman’s rank-order correlation coefficient, rs, must be computed first. The following steps must be employed:
- Rank both variables in order from smallest to largest, assigning a value of “1” to the smallest value for each variable, a “2” for the second-smallest value for each variable, etc.
- For each pair of observations (that is, for each paired value of X and Y, compute di, the difference between the ranked values of Xi and Yi.
- Compute di2, the squared difference of the ranks of Xi and Yi.
- Compute rs as follows:
The test statistic itself is calculated as:
which is a t-value with degrees of freedom n – 2. Here, rs is the Spearman rank-order correlation coefficient and n is the sample size.
Step 3: Obtain the p-value associated with the calculated z-score. The p-value indicates the probability of observing a correlation as extreme or more extreme than the observed sample correlation, under the assumption that the null hypothesis is true.
Step 4: Determine the conclusion. If the p-value is larger than the prespecified α-level, fail to reject the null hypothesis (that is, retain the claim that the correlation in the population is zero). If the p-value is smaller than the prespecified α-level, reject the null hypothesis in favor of the alternative.
Example
Let’s look at a random selection of 10 of my songs and see if there is a significant correlation between the number of stars a song has (its “rating”) and the number of times it has been played (its “playcount”). Let the X variable be the song’s rating and the Y variable be its playcount. I suspect a positive correlation between rating and playcount (or else my rating system is highly flawed!) Here, n = 10 and let α = 0.05.
H0: rs = 0
Ha: rs > 0
The following table shows the raw data and the rankings needed to compute rs.
Here Rx and Ry represent the ranks of X and Y, respectively, d represents the difference Rx – Ry, and d2 is the squared differences.
Since our calculated p-value is smaller than our α-level, we reject H0 and conclude that the correlation in the population is significantly greater than zero.
SOMEBODY SUCKS AT BLOGGING
(Hint: it’s me.)
Sorry, people. It’s been a crazy summer. Marriage, job, thesis, all that fun stuff. Plus walking. Lots and lots of walking.
ANYWAY.
The blogs are up*; there are like 150-something of them. Plus a bonus of four earlier blogs that somehow got lost in the ether and never got posted when they were supposed to.
Honestly? You should just unsubscribe. You don’t deserve getting 500 emails saying “Stupid Eigenslacker Lady Just Mass-Posted 5 Months of Drivel, Go Check It Out!”
(I’m assuming that’s how subscriptions work.)
I don’t know how you put up with me.
VROOM!
*Everything should be up except for two of my weekly stats posts. They’re not posted yet because I can’t find the pictures that go with them. For some reason, they’re not will the dozens of other blog pictures I’ve posted over the past few days. Anyway. Once I find the piccys, I’ll post those two blogs, too.
How to Read Sheet Music
I keep forgetting to post this, but it’s hilarious. I know at least one person who reads these blogs is a music nerd (MATT!), so you’ll probably like it.
Ask not for whom the Equinox…it nox for thee.
CBC News: reporting the important stuff.
Okay, yeah, those Calgary bathrooms are awesome. Those are the rave ones I blogged about a few weeks ago.
You think Hillary vs. Trump is an important decision? It’s got nothing on Montreal vs. Whitecourt vs. Calgary vs. Calgary vs. Winnepeg!
To be honest, though, any one of those toilets in those bathrooms could run the US better than Trump could.
Eigenblogger 