Purely To Get Rid of That Fucking Music

I have nothing at all to say but I just noticed that Z Rock is the last post on our page and this post will bump it off.

The Internet Does it Better

I'm home from work today and I just ordered lunch online through delivery.com.

I love ordering shit online, the less interaction I have with people during the buying process the better.

Porno, Christmas shopping and food should all be ordered online.

It beats the hell out of calling the Chinese food place and restating your order like seven times and the reading of your debit card number is nearly impossible.

I also pay every single one of my bills online. Even to people. I'm going on vacation with Side Bar's older brother later this month and I cut the check from my online banking account and Bank of America just mails him a check. They used to take the funds out of your account right away but now you have to wait until the person cashes it, which is annoying but it's still pretty dope.

Oh, that music from whatever that game is is annoying. I feel like I should be waiting online for Space Mountain.

Guess I know where I'll be tonight...

Care to join me?

Some lady just had eight friggin' babies

"The one on the end, she know it good."

I just don't get this. First of all, how the hell does this even happen? I'm no biologist or fertility doctor (well, that's not entirely true, zing!), but I can say with some degree of certainty that human beings aren't supposed to have litters.

A woman has given birth to octuplets at a Kaiser Permanente hospital in Bellflower, hospital officials confirmed today.

...“My eyes got to be the size of saucers,” Dr. Karen Maples said, when it became obvious there was an eighth child. “We just went on and delivered the babies.”

To give you an idea of how ridiculous this is:

Maples said 46 people were involved in the deliveries.

Forty-six people? For one woman? Better hope no one else happened to enter labor right then. That's gotta be like every doctor in the county, officially crossing the line from "Oh my, that poor mother!" to "What a selfish bitch." Seriously, lady, ever heard of the concept of other people? 

How does someone provide for eight new kids? If you're not already rich, you must be royally fucked by something like this, right? Reminds me of that old nursery rhyme I just made up:

Two babies, fine, but three's a crowd

More than that is not allowed!

When something happens of this sort

Always remember to abort!

[repeat as necessary]

Where Do You Live, Dude?

England is funny. What if you lived in one of these places?

SILF

You know, for a blind dude, our Governor has pretty decent taste.

I can see Canada from my front porch!

And yes, I thought of the nickname on my own. And yes, I realize that so did someone at Huffington Post, Wonkette, and Fark, among others, as well. So don't e-mail me.

All The Assholes Live In Texas

Girls high school basketball is an interesting sport. Generally the teams are either very good and function like real basketball teams, or the teams are very bad and function more like a gym class. This leads to great games with good fundamentals and playmaking between the good teams, freaking disasters of games that can barely be called basketball between the bad teams, and then travesties of justice when one of the good teams plays one of the bad teams.

The Covenant School in Dallas is a good team. Dallas Academy is a bad team. In a recent game, the Covenant School beat Dallas Academy by a score of 100-0. Add to this the fact that Dallas Academy is a school for kids with learning disabilities. And the fact that they have only 20 girls in their school.

Did I forget to mention that the Covenant School maintained their full court press and three point shots into the fourth quarter until they scored their hundredth point? After the game the Covenant coach said, "It just happened". Apparently meaning, "It just so happened that we forgot to take off the full court press at half time when the score was 59-0. At least we slowed down in the second half and only scored 41 points."

Incidentally, the term asshole seems way dirtier when written as two words.

Friday Classic Video: Sexy presidential sex acts

We're all quite aware of the Bill Clinton / Monica Lewinsky cigar routine, and who knows what the hell was going on with JFK and Marilyn Monroe? I can't think of anything too risque involving Jimmy Carter (thankfully). And hey, I know liberals are supposed to be all "free love" and whatever, but Barack and Michelle have been in the White House all of like two days. This is a ridiculous assumption even for FOX to make.



Hey, I'm all about the occasional freaky bedroom activity, but I don't recall MSNBC suggesting Dubya was banging Barney in the Lincoln Bedroom. Sheesh.

Happy Obama Day!

I'm not generally a fan of exclamation marks, but I feel it's warranted here in the title of this post.

Big ups to America for inaugurating Barack. It's really hard to put into words how I feel about this. I'm just happy that today I can finally tell my students that they can word hard enough and be the President and actually mean it. Holla at ya boy.

I feel great about this whole plane-in-the-Hudson-River thing

Don't know if you've heard, but (if you can believe this) a plane, uh, landed (?) in the Hudson River earlier today. And not the lame part of the Hudson (upstate). Apparently it went in at like 57th Street. A few hundred feet from midtown Manhattan (and my office). And everyone on board somehow lived. And the plane didn't, like, get destroyed. And my secret identity is David Wright.

The pilot, whose name -- Chesley B. "Sully" Sullenberger -- sounds as made up as this whole incident, clearly deserves the World's Greatest Blow Job (NSFW, dumbass).

(Oh, and sorry if you clicked that link. But if you don't know what Lemonparty is, then leave the Internet right now.)

So anyway, here's why I feel great about this thing:

1. Obviously, everyone survived. I mean think about that. If you're one of those passengers, that is an AMAZING time to cash in your good karma. You were in a goddamn PLANE CRASH and you lived. And this wasn't some rinky-dink Cessna or something; it was a full-on 150-passenger Airbus. And your emergency "landing" wasn't in some field; it was in a river not far from a fairly famous series of plane crashes like seven-and-a-half years ago. And you lived.

2. On a more selfish note, I'm getting on a plane leaving NYC tomorrow. The way I see it, what are the odds of something like this happening twice in two days? **knocks very, very hard on wood**

3. Upon hearing that what caused the flight to go down was that a flock of birds flew into the engine or something, I think I may have come up with the single greatest movie reference ever. Y'all remember that scene in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade where Indy and his dad are on that beach and the Nazi guy in the plane is bearing down on them about to shoot them to pieces, right? Well, Indy's dad has the brilliant idea to make those weird noises and flap his umbrella at this big group of birds nearby. The birds all fly up and swarm the plane, causing it to crash. As Indy looks at his pops with a huge "WTF?" expression, pops smiles and utters what I later repeated to my co-workers:

"I suddenly remembered my Charlemagne..."

Unfortunately, I'm currently working in an office full of women in the fashion industry, so my reference was lost. (Sorry for the random sexism. Other than times like these, that kind of office environment is pretty sweet.)

(And for proof that I was really early with that superb quote job, I put it into the comments on Digg as soon as I could find a story on the crash. I'm number 6. Stupid Digg users ranked a different version of the story higher, so, sadly, most people will miss my brilliance.)

(If anyone can find a clip of that Indy scene, I'd love to put it up like right here-ish.)

(No more parentheses, I promise.)

Time To Kill? Z-Rox

If you've got some time on your hands, play this game. It's very interesting. If you don't have time, then don't start the game. I managed to get through all 100 levels, but I had to cheat on about 10 or so. Out those ten there were maybe 5 where I had the picture drawn perfectly, but couldn't guess the right word for the answer and another 5 that I never would have gotten. It's very satisfying to see the pictures and get the answers. Just go through the tutorial (about 30 seconds) and it will make perfect sense. On those few you're going to go crazy on, use the walkthrough. Click the part that says "spoiler" to open the walkthtough.

I took the game down because it seemed to be screwing with the page. Also that music sucked. But you can search for z-rox and play it somewhere if you're still into it.

Giant Disappointment

OB's picture is worth 1,000 words, but I wanted to add a few thoughts with almost 24 hours of hindsight to reflect on yesterday's Giants-Eagles game.

First of all, I think it is worth noting that virtually every facet of the Giants' game was off yesterday - there is lots and lots of blame to go around for this loss. In no particular order:

• Eli was shite for almost all of the game;
• Carney's two missed FG's made a comeback virtually impossible in the 4th quarter;
• Gilbride's inexplicable decision to pass more and run less in the second and third quarters was and is astounding (I think he calls the plays, if not, my bad);
• The defensive line failed to sack McNabb even one time (or just hit him late and take the 15 yards - anything to break his rhythm);
• The secondary couldn't stop the medium passing game over the middle for the last 30 minutes of the game; and
• The offense failed to convert two crucial fourth downs when Eli couldn't get low enough to convert a fourth down that a high schooler could have made on the first, and Brandon Jacobs ignored a wide open left side and instead dove for the middle on the second.

And that's just a few of the problems. Which is why even though I know the Eagles won, I will remember this as a Giants' loss.

But I disagree with OB and anyone else who was stunned and/or crushed by this loss. Despite some frustration for the above-chronicled collective bed-shitting by this team, I don't feel too badly today, and I have none but love for our G-Men. The Giants had a great season, and it was really fun to watch them dominate the NFC all year. The Carolina win was about as exciting as a regular season game gets. And I don't care what anyone says, when you lose a guy like Burress - especially in the manner the Giants lost him - it has a huge impact. Throw in the fact that Jacobs was breaking down, Tuck was hurt, and we were battling a number of other injuries, and the handwriting was on the wall shortly after Thanksgiving: this was not a team that was going to go all the way. I mean, 1-3 to end the season really does not inspire too much confidence, even when the one win is more important than all three losses combined. I haven't looked it up, but I cannot imagine too many Super Bowl winners ended their season with a .250 winning percentage over their final four games.

This was a solid team, but I am not sure they were the best in the NFC, and they definitely were not the best when it mattered most. The comparisons between the 2007-08 Giants and the 2008-09 Eagles may have drawn complaints from the players and coaches of both teams this week, but they are spot on. This Eagles team was uninspiring for much of the regular season, snuck into the playoffs on luck and some nice wins down the stretch, and caught fire at exactly the right time.

And before you get too down about the end of the Giants' season, consider this: after pulling off a shocking upset in the 2002 Super Bowl (a win that was frequently compared to the Giants' Super Bowl win in 2008), the Patriots had a disappointing campaign the following year, only to win consecutive Super Bowls in the two years that followed. And if that's not enough, consider this: one of the top defenses in the NFC is getting Osi Umenyiora back in 2009. I will distract myself with a mediocre Mets team over the summer, but I am already looking forward to the 2009 Giants.

How I feel

Fuck you, the Giants.

Hate,
Open Bar

I Never Thought I'd See This Again

Does everyone remember back in the day, circa 1990, when the coolest thing going was the hi top fade? You all remember the high top fade, right? If not, here's the most famous hi top fade ever.

This, of course, is the famous duo, Kid N Play. Kid, on the left, rocked the quintessential box cut and if he's famous for anything else, then I don't know what it is. My man Play, on the right, rocked a far more standard box cut with a bit of a Gumby rolled in.

Here's some other fine examples of great box cuts:


It didn't seem like it at the time, but this is a pretty stupid haircut. I mean, by and large, it's just funny looking on most people. Add to that the various designs and permutations that people made to it, think Bobby Brown circa Humpin' Around, and it's clear that this was a style that had gotten way out of hand.



Also I think this style suffered from the fact that white people were also in the midst of really bad hairstyles and blatant overdoing in their cuts as well. It was a worldwide phenomenon. The pre-Clinton era was just a bad time for hair around the world. Exhibit A:

This is too awesome not to be real.

Anyway, I'm not making this up, the hi top fade is on the comeback. There are several kids in the high school I work in rocking the box cut today as we speak. I thought I had gotten my fill of making fun of kids with box cuts in 1993, but I was wrong. It's just as fun today to make fun of kids with the box/fade.

I think this current woebegotten trend started itself with the arrival of one Brandon Jennings on the scene. Brandon Jennings is known for two things: The first is that he's the kid who was the number 1 ranked high school basketball player who opted to play professionally in Europe rather than go to college for a year. The second is that in high school he rocked a box with fade. Seriously.


Since I've started teaching high school there have been several trends that have boggled my mind - wearing 3XL solid colored t-shirts, chicken noodle soup (with the soda on the side), having babies (which I was once told was "in style"), and so forth - but this box with fade trend coming back is the one that I really just wouldn't believe unless I had seen it with my own two eyes.

Sanjay Gupta can smoke my cock

So CNN’s Sanjay Gupta is gonna be our new surgeon general, eh? Color me unimpressed. (A tannish/beigeish shade, sort of a cross between dry sand and sand that was wet like half an hour ago but is pretty much dry now. So, basically sand-colored, I guess.)

The Gupe (as I'll be calling him)? Not a big pot fan. And his reasoning is even weaker than your mom's. Quoth the Gupe:

"[M]arijuana isn't really very good for you."

[Insert blindingly obvious well-neither-are-alcohol-or-cigarettes-or-a-thousand-other-things-and-they're-not-illegal spiel.]

He then begins quite an impressive list of reasons why, in fact, marijuana is good for people:

"True, there are health benefits for some patients. Several recent studies, including a new one from the Scripps Research Institute, show that THC, the chemical in marijuana responsible for the high, can help slow the progress of Alzheimer's disease. (In fact, it seems to block the formation of disease-causing plaques better than several mainstream drugs.) Other studies have shown THC to be a very effective antinausea treatment for people--cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy, for example--for whom conventional medications aren't working. And medical cannabis has shown promise relieving pain in patients with multiple sclerosis and reducing intraocular pressure in glaucoma patients."

That's a fairly convincing series of arguments for legalizing pot, at the very least for medical purposes, right? Right? No?

"But I suspect that most of the people eager to vote yes on the new ballot measures aren't suffering from glaucoma, Alzheimer's or chemo-induced nausea. Many of them just want to get stoned legally."

:-( 

That's right, fuck all those goddamn sick people. We can't be turnin' all of society into hippies and wastoids, now can we.

"Why do I care? As Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, puts it, 'Numerous deleterious health consequences are associated with [marijuana's] short- and long-term use, including the possibility of becoming addicted.'"

Nora Volkow is this luscious beauty, for the record:

KILL IT WITH FIRE!

So yeah, take what "she" says with a grain of salt.

"What are other health consequences? Frequent marijuana use can seriously affect your short-term memory. It can impair your cognitive ability (why do you think people call it dope? [Ed. note: Duh, because it’s doooooooooope!]) and lead to long-lasting depression or anxiety."

Or it could, you know, not. It could just feel awesome while I watch my new Pineapple Express DVD sitting on my couch not side-swiping children as I rush back home from happy hour. Maybe the consequence is that it enhances my creativity, so I sit down and write out 5,000-word blog posts on why tigers are way bad-asser than lions, but a liger is like the One Ring in Lord of the Rings – it rules them all. Number four on my Sweetest Big Cats list would have to be the black panther. ‘Cause, man, you can’t like see it when it’s dark. 

Guitar Hero Is The New Crack

Many of the readers of this blog remember the time Side Bar and MMG rented "Parappa the Rapper" for Playstation and there were about 15 twenty-something dudes in their basement enjoying themselves way too much playing a game that seemed to be designed for kids. In that game you had to press various combinations of buttons according to a beat in order for your character to "rap" at an acceptable level. Whoever designed that game was definitely a drug addict, there were all sorts of strange talking animals doing strange things like being driving instructors and making cakes with seafood ingredients, but that's beside the point. The point is that that was the first game I remember that had that format where you had to press button combinations with a beat.

All of us have also seen those people playing "Dance Dance Revolution" in arcades or wherever and they look kindof silly tapping their feet with the beat because it's not really dancing, but even so the people who play that game seem to love it. The problem with that game, though, is that you have to be active. Like really active. This genre of game where you have to press button combinations with a beat has finally been perfected.

Guitar Hero, which I had never played before Christmas of this past year, is the culmination of many years of genius being deployed into this game type. It's more active than Parappa, far less so than Dance Revolution, and just about the perfect amount of interactivity for a video game.

This game is addictive. I have Guitar Hero World Tour which now also comes with a drum kit and a microphone for the entire band experience. You can't help but look like an idiot when you play this game. You definitely don't look like Slash or Eddie Van Halen, the same way that dudes playing Dance Dance Revolution don't look like Michael Jackson or Fred Astaire

This is what most people look like when they play Guitar Hero:


I'm really serious:


UPDATE: Fa sho' (I'm struggling with how to spell the slang pronunciation of "for sure". Any ideas?)