Tuesday, December 30, 2008

There's us, and then there's these guys

Inbreds don't only live in West Virginia.

I like to think of this particular blog as proudly pro-New Jersey. But once in a while, I come across something that reminds me that while we may represent what is best about our fair state, New Jersey is still packed to the jagerbombs with douchebags. 

I just spent five agonizing minutes browsing through some of the pictures on this site from hell, ClubItUp. It was created by someone called Franky Stylez (natch), who looks exactly as you would suspect. You can learn much more about him here. My favorite part? "Franky Stylez Catch Phrase [sic]: 'I am about to get sick wit it' and 'Touch it.'" (Touch what? Ew, gross, no way.)

The site promotes clubs in New Jersey. That, added to what I mentioned above about my dawg Franky Stizzles, should tell you just about all you need to know. I think that every time this site posts a picture, an angel gets mauled by a syphilitic bear. 

Monday, December 29, 2008

What a wonderful world!

Bet that feels worse on your cheeks than Jessica's inner thighs, huh.

Yesterday was magnificent. Oh sooooooo magnificent! Thank you, thank you, NFL gods.

A postseason without the Patriots, the Cowboys, and Brett Favre? The Lions actually finishing 0-16? The Chargers starting the season off 4-8, then somehow making the playoffs over the 2007/2008-Mets-level-meltdown-style Broncos? Fan-friggin'-tastic. Bonus: That last bit led to this marvelous image of Jay Cutler looking like someone just made fun of him in front of the whole school!

Jay Cutler's Indian name is Quivering Lips McGee.

(More Cutler pics here.)

Schadenfreude, that elusive mistress of others' miseries, also gave us this marvelous, stupendous, splendiferous, scrumtrelecent story of a certain Cowboy quarterback's postgame shower incident (Cue prison-rape jokes.):
"Tony Romo's three turnovers were momentarily meaningless [Ed. note: Not true.] Sunday night when players started yelling in the shower after the quarterback collapsed...

When asked later what happened, Romo said, 'Um, you know, I was just a little banged up, I guess.'"
Man, sometimes the Romo-collapsing-on-the-field-AND-in-the-shower jokes just write themselves.

Reached for comment, Terrell Owens -- fighting through tears -- said, "That's my teammate!"

Quivering Lips McGee's distant cousin, Sniffling Bitchboy Johnson.

Tuesday, December 23, 2008

Man, the pope is real jerk

Pope = Gargamel?

I’m a Protestant. The main difference, I think, between my version of Christianity and, say, Side Bar’s and LJT’s (Catholics) is that, to me, what some old dude in a funny hat who got elected behind closed doors in some arcane, secret ritual involving multicolored smoke says doesn’t mean shit.

Today’s winner? Me:

Pope Benedict said on Monday that saving humanity from homosexual or transsexual behavior was just as important as saving the rainforest from destruction.

"(The Church) should also protect man from the destruction of himself. A sort of ecology of man is needed," the pontiff said in a holiday address to the Curia, the Vatican's central administration.

"The tropical forests do deserve our protection. But man, as a creature, does not deserve any less."

The Catholic Church teaches that while homosexuality is not sinful, homosexual acts are. It opposes gay marriage and, in October, a leading Vatican official called homosexuality "a deviation, an irregularity, a wound."

(I wonder if I could make a plowing-down-the-rain-forest/plowing-altar-boys joke here.)

The pope said humanity needed to "listen to the language of creation" to understand the intended roles of man and woman. He compared behavior beyond traditional heterosexual relations as "a destruction of God's work."

He also defended the Church's right to "speak of human nature as man and woman, and ask that this order of creation be respected."

I suppose it is a lot to ask of a former Nazi that he try to view human beings different from himself as human beings not, you know, plants.

Whatever, he’s really old. He’ll be dead soon enough, and we can all watch the funny smoke ceremony on CNN again! Yay!

Friday, December 19, 2008

Blog Fatigue

I get bored of seeing the same thing on the blog, and when we go more than a few days without a new post, it sort of sucks. And that is particularly the case when the most recent post is (a) yours and (b) kind of shitty.

This post is my solution to that problem.

Chwing!

If I am going to look at the same post for a week, it might as well be this one.


Tuesday, December 16, 2008

Barachiavellian

We haven't written much of anything about President-elect Obama's designation of Hillary Clinton as the incoming Secretary of State. I will try to write more later, but the more I think about it - and in light of the news that Caroline Kennedy wants to replace Hil as the junior Senator from New York - I am becoming convinced that Obama moved her to State as a way of (a) getting her out of his way, legislatively speaking, (b) freeing up the seat for his new friend Caroline, or (c) both.









due principe?

A Vegan Joke For Open Bar

How many vegans does it take to change a light bulb?

None, they can't change anything

Monday, December 15, 2008

Quote of The Day




Lucy Kellaway, a columnist for The Financial Times, relayed a story heard from a friend that had worked (and had been fired from) the school that Paul McCartney and Heather Mills' five year old daughter, Beatrice, attends.

Ms. Kellaway writes that, according to her friend, "at a recent parents’ evening, Heather Mills was told that her daughter was rather good at the recorder." Ms. Mills apparently replied: 'She gets that from me.'"

Sunday, December 14, 2008

We Wish Shoe a Merry Christmas

An Iraqi reporter sums up how just about everyone in the world feels about President George W. Bush, as his eight years come to an end.

Saturday, December 13, 2008

A Very Merry Christmas From Where's Luke

With a guest appearance from Diesal, who's mad because he had to be in a Christmas dance even though he's Jewish

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

Friday Classic Video (on Saturday): Rubber, Rubber Duck, Y'all

Courtesy of RWI - I freaking love this.

Yawn - 12.13.08

Check out this short piece on the transition from "dating" to "hooking up" among teens. How old is this guy? The point of the piece is that teens date less and hook up more (and that matters for some not immediately obvious reason that he sort of explains). Really? No one's "going steady" anymore or meeting at the malt shop for an egg cream? No fucking shit, dummy. I am old and married and I knew that. This is what counts as news in the New York Times these days?

Next week he is doing an expose on this thing called "a computer" and how all the kids are starting to use it to communicate with each other, and how no one has pen pals or writes letters anymore.

Also, this guy's last name is "Blow" and I think that is kind of funny in a sort of are-we-ever-going-to-just-grow-up kind of way.

Friday, December 12, 2008

Just One Question, Omar

I'm definitely not complaining that the Mets signed the gie who just set the record for saves in a season when they desparately needed a closer. I'm just wondering why the Mets were the only team who wanted him. Why didn't the Angels even try to sign him? Do they know something? I know he took a physical and everything so I guess it's not that big a deal, but I find it very strange that no one else seemed to be in on this.

Mitigating that to a certain extent is the fact that in addition to Francisco Rodriguez aka K-Rod, the Mets also traded for JJ Putz, who was Seattle's closer for the last couple of years and an all star.

Also my heart sank a little bit when I'd heard that as part of the deal for JJ Putz the Mets traded Endy Chavez to the Mariners. That guy was easily my favorite Met.

Tuesday, December 9, 2008

Cartesian Impasse

Renee Descartes was a smart dude. He's most famous for saying, or writing, rather, "cogito ergo sum", translated as, "I think therefore I am", which is actually a pretty good starting point for this post. Descartes believed that he existed mainly because of his thoughts. He argued extensively that the senses couldn't necessarily be trusted as proof of existence or of the nature of things and that, in essence, the mind and the body were separate.

Descartes went on to discuss the nature of the relationship between mind and body, deciding that the mind was the essence of a person, and that the body was a wholly separate thing that is ultimately ruled by the mind. Kindof like a remote control car. He argued (incorrectly as it turns out) that the pineal gland, which is right in the middle of the brain, was the seat of the soul in the body. The physical manifestation of mental existence.

All of this brings us to the idea of Cartesian Impasse, as it's known in some circles. Since the pineal gland turns out not to be "the soul", we are therefore at a loss to explain how the mind actually communicates with the body. Descartes started it, but all the people who have come after him haven't really spoken very well on the matter either.

I find this to be very interesting. It has been hundreds of year since Descartes set about becoming "the father of modern philosophy", but this, his core issue in a sense, is still a big question mark. I mean, really this is *THE* question in philosophy: what is the nature of being? It's fascinating that no one on either side of the spectrum has provided even a remotely feasible solution.

Fast forward 400 years and we know how the brain works. We can ask people to perform tasks and see the neurons firing in the brain. We know which areas correspond to which functions in the body. We can ask people to think about something entirely abstract, not perform any physical activity, and watch the brain working. The question still remains, however: how does this cluster of electrical impulses in the brain give rise to what we would call thought, or to extend on Descartes' idea, existence?

There doesn't really seem to be an answer. I can't really even imagine what a feasible answer to that question would be. If anyone ever actually answers this question, then I want that guy to be president. Or better yet, supreme dictator of Earth.

Another interesting and tangentially related point is that I find it similarly fascinating that whatever the edge of people's understanding of the world happens to be is right where they insert God into the equation. Descartes, easily one of the smartest dudes ever (he's not only the father of philosophy, but one of his throwaway examples in a math treatise led to Newton and Liebnitz separately inventing calculus.), reached the end of his train of thought about the nature of being to insert God into the equation. Ancient Greek dudes didn't know why the sun came up in the morning and set at night, so they decided it was a god riding a chariot across the sky. I would bet that if you had this mind/body discussion with 100 people, then a lot of them would say that the point at which we can't explain how electrical impulses give rise to actual thought and therefore existence is right where God comes in to connect the dots between the two. I would bet you could find some neuroscientists who would give you that answer.

I'm not opposed to the idea of God, in fact I find the whole notion rather intriguing, but I just also find it very interesting that it seems to be the lazy way out for some people. I feel like I'm the opposite. The more I learn about the complexities of the universe, the nature of being and matter, and the absolutely nonsensical way that things seem to work, the more I feel like there must be some sort of power who put those things into place.

So the point is that I'm fascinated that this mind/body thing is the ultimate question and that the closer we get to finding the answer, the farther away we seem to be from it.

Sunday, December 7, 2008

New Wave Strikes Again

Well, guys we've been blogging the hell out of the web-o-sphere this month....NOT!...schwing...i like to play...i don't even own A gun, let alone many which would necessitate the use of an entire rack.

Anyhow, since you gies don't have any ideas, I'm gonna have to chime in with some new music for the holiday season. You all know how much I love new wave music, so it will come as no surprise when I recommend these hits for the holidays.

I want everyone to go out and get The Killers new album, Day and Age. The Killers are awesome. And if you don't have their first two albums, Hot Fuss and Sam's Town, then get those too. And if you're feeling saucy, then get Sawdust, an album of B-sides they put out last year.

Secondly, if you love The Killers, and I think I've just proven that everyone does love The Killers, then you should check out The Bravery. Another 80s influenced band that feels a lot like The Cure to me, with a little bit of REM and maybe some of The Smiths.

I recently bought two albums by The Police, Ghost in the Macine and Synchronicity. Ghost in the Machine is a little bit dated for me, with the obvious exception of "Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic". There's a possibility that that's my favorite song of all time. Synchronicity, on the other hand, is a great album. Like great. You should get it.

And anyone who took enough of an interest in the New Wave post up until this point should go out and get an album by The Smiths. I would recommend "Singles" as a good start. Now The Smiths are not for everyone. Here's my theory on The Smiths. There are plenty of cool people who don't like The Smiths, but there isn't anyone who likes The Smiths that isn't cool. Therefore, fans of The Smiths are just a subset of all cool people. Again, it's really not everyone's cup of tea, but if you're a cynical malcontent who secretly revels at how great the world really is, then I know you'll like The Smiths. Check them out.

PS-the title of this post is a blunt allusion to a song by The Smiths, "Bigmouth Strikes Again", one of their best.