Could I have picked a worse time to start following the Rockets? Minutes after jumping on the bandwagon they get blown out by the Lakers in Game 7 of their second round series. Then news breaks that my favorite player on the team, Aaron Brooks (aka "The Skycap") might be heading out of town as part of a trade that would bring the Rockets Amare Stoudamire. (Tracy McGrady for Amare Stoudamire? Somebody should tell the GMs involved that its 2009, not 2006.)
Heading to Phoenix? Allow me to take your bag, sir.
The fracture in
Yao's left foot has worsened and could be severe enough to threaten his
entire next season or even his career, depending on the success of
potential treatments he could choose, [Rockets team physician Tom] Clanton said.
[...]
Yao, who was hurt
during this year's NBA Western Conference semifinals against the Los
Angeles Lakers, is scheduled to visit specialists around the country to
choose a course of treatment. He could try a more conservative approach
by immobilizing the foot in hopes the hairline fracture in his left
tarsal navicular bone will heal on its own, as doctors predicted it
would when Yao's season ended May 8. Because Yao has no pain or other
symptoms, Clanton said there is reason to be optimistic that approach
could work.
But Clanton also
revealed Monday that a CT scan showed Yao's injury not only failed to
heal as expected but has gotten worse, potentially requiring a surgical
remedy.
The blame for this injury fails squarely on the shoulders of the Rockets. The facts are these:
The history of basketball is littered with players over seven feet tall whose careers were either cut short or never got off the ground because of injury problems. This includes promising draft picks like Sam Bowie, and Greg Oden; players who peaked for a few great years but could never recapture their skills like Ralph Sampson and Bill Walton; and freak shows like Gheorghe Muresan and Manute Bol.
Yao Ming has played year round since he came to the NBA. Part of his deal with the Chinese national team was that he would play for them during the summers instead of taking any time off. As a result, his body has been unable to recover from the aches and pains of a highly physical game, and he has worn down faster than he otherwise would have.
Yao has already had a history of injuries. His first three years in the league, he played 82, 82, and 80 games. Since then? 57, 48, 55, and 77. This past season was his most effective in four years; he didn't get injured until the second round of the playoffs.
The Rockets are supposed to be the Moneyball team of basketball. Their GM, Daryl Morey, is an MIT graduate who has spearheaded the statistical revolution in the sport. So, tell me why they were unable to figure out that making Yao play 35 minutes a game in as many games as possible was a bad idea? Why didn't he sit out the first 30 games of the season? Or limit him to 20 minutes a game until the last month?
Nope, just keep running him out there every night until his feet can't take it and his career ends. BRILLIANT STRATEGY ROCKETS.
Now that Yao is gone, can we at least bring back this logo?
You know what really grinds my gears? Somebody who quotes themselves like they were a historical figure. Like, say, in the middle of a presentation, mixed in with quotes from Churchill and Roosevelt and Martin Luther King, Jr., there is a quote from the guy giving the presentation. In fucking quotes and everything, and with a citation.
"I am a pompous douchebag who thinks that their words are so profound that they need to be carried on through the generations." - I.M. Adouche
You don't need to quote yourself! You are you! The reason that quotes exist is so that you can cite somebody's point without stealing credit for their words. But since anybody who gets quoted is obviously a person of stature - how else would we know what they said, and why else would we care - putting yourself in quotes assigns that same stature to you.
At least, that's what you are trying to do. Except it doesn't work, because its such an embarrassing thing to do, that the only status that gets assigned to you is the status of being a douchebag.
New game started: craftj2 vs killgore TWL98 12 0 rated noescape=ON challenge=VOID. craftj2's turn
[Where we join in the action, I am already leading 353 to 233]
killgore: move N6 contrail 68 Wait until your play is validated .. OK craftj2: MOVE 14H debaTes 102 * killgore makes you a request to abort the game. The offer is valid until you make a move. TELL killgore are you kidding killgore tells you: fuckin' ridiculous TELL killgore are you gonna cry all day crybaby killgore tells you: internet courage - see it all the time - congrats TELL killgore just like I see bitches bitching on the internet all the time killgore tells you: whine to your ma boy killgore tells you: suckle on her teat TELL killgore whine about what? look at the score TELL killgore try taking your beating like a man TELL killgore instead of trying to abort the game TELL killgore if anything should have been aborted its you killgore tells you: go play with yourself some more TELL killgore its more challenging than playing you TELL killgore my penis puts up more of a fight TELL killgore its also more rewarding
Yesterday, I attended a Houston Astros game. During the seventh inning stretch, Miguel Tejada was interviewed on the Jumbotron with wacky music and graphics. Who do you most want to meet, Miguel Tejada? The response: I would like to meet Michael Jackson, followed by the appearance of a picture of Michael Jackson standing next to Miguel Tejada bouncing back and forth.
Hilarious! The in-stadium clip editor put this together before he died, and nobody caught it!
Nope. Immediately after this, the image changed to Michael Jackon's picture from the album cover to "Thriller" while the title track played over the loudspeaker. The caption? Thank you Michael!! 25,000 people stood and applauded for a full thirty seconds.
They were, like the rest of the world, standing and applauding for a man who used his wealth and fame to molest children and manipulate the children's parents and the legal system.
This is not a footnote, or an asterisk to the career of a musical genius. While acknowledging that there are times that it is unfair to define a man by the worst thing he ever did, there is a threshold over which this must become the case. Serial child molestation, in my humble opinion, meets this threshold. The music career in the asterisk. So please excuse me, society, if while you stand and applaud for this man, I sit on my hands. It's a habit I got into as a child when I heard Jackson's name.
[Actress Farrah Fawcett and noted child rapist Michael Jackson both died today. Fawcett succumbed to anal and liver cancer, and Jackson suffered from heart failure. Fawcett was 62. Jackson was of varying ages, depending on which part of him we're talking about.]
The bad news is former actress and model Farrah Fawcett has died from anal cancer. The good news is I only had "anal" left on my celebrity cancer bingo card.
Farrah's former husband, Six Million Dollar Man star Lee Major, upon hearing the news, remarked that he regretted his bionic upgrades included a radioactive cock.
What do you get when you cross Farrah Fawcett with an anal tumor? - A pain in the ass with a pain in the ass.
What's the difference between Steve Jobs and Farrah Fawcett? - Their position on the organ donor recipient list.
Did you know that Farrah Fawcett was up for the Ali McGraw role in Love
Story? - She would have been great, she would just have to play herself.
What's the difference between the Tin Man and Michael Jackson? - One went to the wizard to ask for a heart, and the other molested children.
What do you get when you cross Michael Jackson with the Empire State Building? - A structurally unstable building that died of heart failure.
And, unfortunately, somebody thought of this before me:
Amazingly, I actually have TV despite Comcast's best efforts so this recap can actually happen. Two mindblowing things happen in the first few minutes: Cat wears something not completely absurd, and the group dance doesn't suck. In fact, it's pretty damn great, perhaps the best hiphop one I've seen.
Nigel is sad that all the celebrities died, which I'm sure Jesse and Jim will be joking about shortly. Farah taught him how to make a pecan pie. Michael Jackson is a "life to celebrate, an inspiration". Keep Nigel away from your children. Hel cannot stop talking but it is, thankfully, a break from Cat talking about how sad Thursdays make her. They go into the Thriller video, which is amazing but like most people I just watched it on Youtube this afternoon.
Cat Deeley comes out looking gorgeous in tangerine gladiator chic tonight. Which of course means she'll probably be wearing a garbage bag paired with a sassy black woman's Easter hat tomorrow. She never looks good two days in a row.
Watching the top dancers come out just makes me realize how much I miss last year's top ten. Especially the top 5 guys. They were all so good. COME BACK TWITCH I LOVE YOU.
Ahem.
Tonight's rotating judge seat is Toni Basil. Yes, that Toni Basil. And she announces that she has won a living legend of hip hop award? What? This is hip hop??
After days of speculation about his
mysterious disappearance, Gov. Mark Sanford (R-S.C.) just admitted to
an extramarital affair and resigned as the chairman of the Republican
Governors Association.
In a drawn-out press conference that began with a long series of
apologies and repeated references to his friend Tom Davis, Sanford
finally came to "the bottom line" when he said, "I've been unfaithful
to my wife." His mistress is an old friend with whom he began a
relationship a year ago, he said.
The revelation comes on the heels of a similar admission by Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.), who, like Sanford, has been mentioned as a possible 2012 presidential candidate.
Sanford's wife and children were not present at the conference.
I guess now we know why he didn't need that stimulus money, IF YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN.
South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford has finally turned up after being missing for an entire week. Nobody knew where he was. Some of his staff speculated he might be in hiking the Appalachian Trail. His wife didn't know where he was, only saying that she was unconcerned and he is "writing something and wanted some space to get away from the kids." There were various unconfirmed (and, ultimately, inaccurate) reports of him traveling to Minnesota, Colorado, and Atlanta. So, where in the world was Governor Sanford?
It turns out South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, who went missing last week with no explanation of his location, was on a seven-day excursion to Buenos Aires, Argentina, according to The State newspaper. The Republican governor, whose name has been floated as a
potential presidential candidate in 2012, said he needed a break after
a long legislative session and embarked on a last-minute trip to the
South American country.
"I wanted to do something exotic," Sanford told the newspaper. "...It's a great city."
Sanford, who left on Thursday, cut the trip short due to the media
attention on his disappearance, the newspaper reported. His wife
initially told the AP that she didn't know where her husband was but
that she wasn't worried, and his staff told reporters on Tuesday that
he had gone hiking on the Appalachian Trail.
So now we have the where, but if you believe his why, then I have some stimulus money turned down by the State of South Carolina to give you.
Needed his space? Wanted to do something exotic? PUH-LEAZE. There is no chance that Governor Sanford was doing anything other than getting himself balls deep in some fine Argentinian women.
I don't necessarily have a problem with this. If his wife wants to believe he was off writing (dipping his quill in some Argentinian ink) then who am I to argue? Hey, maybe they even have an understanding about his doing of things that are exotic. I'm just slightly puzzled that I haven't heard more speculation like this.
Is this the first time Sanford has disappeared like this? Maybe since he was governor, but this interview on The Colbert Report would indicate that his predilection for "alone time" is nothing new.
[Warning: the following article makes liberal use of the C word]
The scene? The fraternity dining room, Saturday night. A group including myself, the Suze, and Jim are playing cards. The game is Threes and Fives. The rules, as we play it, are simple: each player is dealt two cards. 3s and 5s are wild. Each player examines their hand, determines a course of action, and then holds the cards out in front of them.
3... 2... 1... drop!
Anybody who drops their cards is out. Anybody still holding their cards shows down. The highest pair wins the pot. Losers match the pot. The game continues until a single player holds their cards.
In this particular hand, the Suze, after lengthy deliberation, elected to drop her cards. After the showdown, it was revealed she had held a pair of Aces. She could only be beat by someone with two 3s, two 5s, or a 3 and a 5. The winning hand that round? A pair of Kings.
Here's where things get ugly. (Remember, the c-word is approachin'!)
Are people still metrosexual? Is that still a thing? I live way up in the hills of West Virginia, and we only rarely get news of societal shifts, so I'm not sure that my anger about metrosexuality is even necessary anymore. Still, I can't help but turn on the television and see lots of men doing lots of things that make me scratch my beard and go, "Huh?"
For instance, there's the Axe advertisements ("For Men That Are Douchebags.") wherein women tackle a dirty man and clean him, the voiceover lady cooing, "Women are three times as likely to give you a skeezy blowjob outside of the club if your hair isn't greasy." I don't even begin to understand how they calculated that statistical reality. There are others too: advertisements for man lotion ("For Men That Don't Want To Get The Hose"), advertisements for sweet deodorants, advertisements for GQ.
Before I go on, I should briefly address <i>GQ</i>: I was signed up for a subscription by a friend of mine. He had purchased golf clubs from a company that said, "For getting these golf clubs, you get subscriptions," and he wanted none of them, so he signed me up instead. So now I get Golf Digest and the aforementioned <i>GQ</i>. What in the hell is up with that magazine? Is there any self-respecting man anywhere who reads, and takes seriously, that magazine? Good lord.
Needless to say, for those rebelling against the societal attempt to de-man-ize itself, the following cleaning regimen is recommended. There are other regimens as well, for other things (like shaving), but that is for another post.
1. Lava Soap. Put a bar in the shower. Washing with it is like washing with sandpaper. It's great. It will get you clean, and that's it. You won't smell great, but there's won't be a hint of anything on you, including the first layer of your skin.
2. Cover that up with Old Spice Body Wash. That way, you can tell you intrusive girlfriend, "Hey, I'm using body wash, leave me alone!" Old Spice offers various "scents" but you'll smell grandfatherly and cranky, which may be synonymous. This is true for all of them.
3. Once out of the shower, use Old Spice deodorant, for the same reason. You can't help but end up smelling like a man...doused in something vaguely alcohol-y smelling.
There you have it, a quick fix for the attempt of women to metrosexualize yourself. Up next: grow a beard.
"Statistics provided by the candidates,
who claim more than 100% of those eligible have cast their ballot in
80-170 cities are not accurate -- the incident has happened in only 50
cities," [Iranian Guardian Council Spokesman Abbas-Ali] Kadkhodaei said.
My mind turns, as it often does, to Maury Povich. When he isn't extracting DNA from unwilling potential fathers, Maury helps scorned women identify the depth and breadth of their mates' infidelity. A lie detector test administrator will ask the men: "Have you cheated on your wife Loquacia with her sister Felicia?" "Have you cheated on your girlfriend Mandy with her best friend Rwanda?" and so on. For the most tawdry of circumstances, investigation of individual indiscretions is abandoned in favor of a shotgun approach.
"You were asked, Have you cheated on your girlfriend Stacy more than 5 times? You said no. The lie detector test determined, [pause for dramatic effect], that was a lie.
You were asked, Have you cheated on Stacy more than 10 times? You said no. The lie detector test determined, that was a lie."
You were asked, Have you cheated on Stacy more than 25 times? You said no. The lie detector test determined... you were telling the truth."
At some point, a number would presumably be reached where he would be able to tell the truth. But even the guests on Maury know better than to get up and celebrate their "passing" of the test after so many failures. It is a just a brief respite before the wailing and kicking and running backstage. The Iranian government, however, has stood up triumphantly and spread its arms.
Baby, stop bein' all crazy! I didn't cheat on you no 170 times, word? It was just that 50 times, and the margin of victory was so big that it didn't mean nothin to me, baby, it didn't mean NOTHIN.
Dear Robert Pattison: I don't know you, but I hate you.
More than hate. I am sick of you. I am sick of seeing lily white face and awful douche hair on the cover of every supermarket tabloid. I'm sick of trying to figure out why girls think you are attractive. If I was a teenage boy right now, would I be trying to look like you to impress girls? Would I be powdering my skin every morning with glitter, putting gel in my hair before I went to bed every night, and walking around with the same look on my face as Jack Nicholson at the end of One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest? GAGH.
Sorry. I just threw up in my mouth a little bit.
As much as I would enjoy hearing that you were smothered to death in your sleep by a 7 foot tall native American, I guess this is going to have to do:
Amid a mob of frenzied fans, Rob Pattison collided with a taxi on the streets of downtown Manhattan Thursday.
The Twilight actor, in New York City filming Remember Me,
apparently attempted to run across the street near the famed Strand
bookstore to escape a hoard of fans when he was clipped on his hip by a
moving cab, whose driver slammed on his breaks upon impact.
And here we go, as I take a break from the endless hell of packing to recap a mostly filler rewards show! Cat Deeley opens it up wearing a sassy low cut suit, apparently having taken last night's criticism to heart. The opening number is a bizarre Mya Michaels choreographed routine of robots* set to Stevie Wonder's "Higher Ground". I get distracted by how much better the original is than the Red Hot Chili Peppers version and zone out. Lil C's ridiculously nonsensical statements get a montage of their own, complete with reaction shots of the crowd. They're a hilarious mix of 'pretending to understand it' and 'shaking head in disbelief'.
There were a bunch of polls lately dealing with health care reform. And the public is staggeringly in favor of it, even with caveats. 75% of people favor universal coverage, although that's slightly down from the peak in 1993, the last time health care reform failed. More interestingly 76% of people are in favor of a public option, even though 46% of people are concerned their employer might drop coverage if one existed, and 42% of people think it would limit access to doctors.
That said there's almost no chance it will happen, since it's far more important that reform be 'bipartisan' than effective. But why, considering Democrats control both houses of Congress by wide margins, and the presidency? The answer, for once, is not just because Harry Reid is a giant vagina in a suit. Although that is undoubtedly part of it.
The day Democrats took control of the Senate, everyone decided to pretend that filibustering every single measure was not just unobjectionable, but not even worthy of comment. So now you need 60 votes in the Senate. But that shouldn't be a problem since Democrats have 59, soon to be 60. You'd normally expect the more conservative Senators to vote against the measure, but vote for cloture (to break the filibuster). But recently the "moderates" have decided that voting no on cloture, in essence joining the Republicans to filibuster, isn't a problem. And neither Barack Obama nor the Senate leadership seem to think so either.
Worse, the HELP committee in the Senate submitted an incomplete proposal to the Congressional Budget Office, which is where bureaucrats carefully weigh bills and then pull a price tag out of their ass. This proposal, which in itself was a compromise between the current system and the more liberal single payer system, was expected to have a jawdroppingly high price tag of $1 trillion over 10 years. But instead it was scored at $1.6 trillion.
Now there's two ways to go here to get the price down. You can reform less, basically cover fewer currently uninsured people, or you can reform more, with a huge array of options Ezra Klein discusses here. Ron Wyden, for instance, has a universal coverage plan that actually lowers the deficit in four years according the the same CBO. But obviously, all the deficit hawks are incredibly opposed to it. So it looks like instead the Democrats will 'compromise' further, resulting in 'health care reform' that's both ridiculously expensive and covers fewer people. And despite all the compromises away from the left, no Republicans will vote for it.
Update: as I write this, apparently another version has been submitted, and as predicted this one covers far fewer people, and still costs a trillion dollars. It also has no public option, thus: "health care reform" to the Senate means "give a trillion dollars to insurance companies in exchange for covering a few currently uninsured people". Excuse me while I get my 'Mission Accomplished' banner out of the closet.
Hey, check out the Big Gay Flag at the five second mark...and then, a few seconds later, a golfer with the Human Rights Campaign patch right there on his shirt. Social Conservatives (Cobras) better be careful, because Teh Gheys (Mongooses) are sending secret messages via Orbitz commercials. The giant gay conspiracy to take over the world is on bitches!
So You Think You Can Dance is back for week 2, and before the dancing even begins we're off to a good start as Cat Deeley comes out wearing the Statue of Liberty's prom dress. One of the pleasures of this show is watching the sartorial insults that are hurled at Cat Deeley's beautiful figure every week.
Randi and Evan
In the completely unnecessary gimmick to frame the performances that is now going to be shoehorned in every week, we learn about the contestants "secrets". Randi makes out with her dog, and Evan once had incredible sideburns. Can we get to the dancing now please?
Louis Van Amstel teaches the pair a jive, which means the same tired and predictable critiques we always get from Nigel about the lack of double bounce, the quality of kick retractions*, and how he didn't "get down into" the dance, whatever that means. Getting down is good advice during a drive by, but less helpful during a dance routine.
Sammy Sosa tested positive for a performance-enhancing drug in 2003, The New York Times reported Tuesday on its Web site, the latest in a string of baseball
stars implicated in the sport's steroids scandal of the past decade.
The
Times said Sosa is one of 104 players who tested positive in baseball's
anonymous 2003 survey, which has been the subject of a protracted court
fight. The paper did not identify the drug.
Before 1998, nobody had ever hit more than 61 home runs in a season. After 1998, Sammy Sosa did it 3 times. Thanks but no thanks, New York Times, but this isn't exactly earth shattering news. Just like with Big Papi, if you stare at the graph of Sammy Sosa's home runs by year and unfocus your eyes, you can see the syringe coming out at you like in a Magic Eye picture.
Or just self-congratulatory masturbation by me? Or both? WE REPORT YOU DECIDE.
Evaluating this match has the same problems as the recent NBA Finals. Did the Lakers win it? Or did the Magic choke and lose it? Incidentally, I think my Scrabble match had almost as many viewers. OOOH NBA YOU GOT BURNED.
"We can double, triple all the forms of alternative energies in wind
and solar and hydro, and even with doubling and tripling in a
relatively short period of time, we're still going to be on fossil
fuels," said James Mulva*, chairman and CEO of ConocoPhillips at the
National Summit in Detroit.
An oil executive thinks that the answer to our energy problems is more oil? NO FUCKING WAY.
Renewable energies, which currently account for less than 5% of our total energy production, will need to be more than doubled or tripled to make up the gap caused by reduced fossil fuel use? GET THE FUCK OUT.
EUPHEMISM ALERT!!
[Mulva] referred to unexplored oil and gas in the United States as the country's "inconvenient secret."
The word "inconvenient" has now been taken over by Al Gore. It no longer means something that is not convenient, but instead only exists as a riff on the title of his global warming documentary. Otherexamplesabound.
*James Mulva! If there is a god, his wife is named Delores. And if you don't get that joke, then you should just stop reading my blog. Srsly. GTFO. Because that is just gold.
Over on The Big Money, Jill Priluck has written a 3 page article* (3 pages? Suzi just fainted) about the role of unpaid labor in today's marketplace. The title? Intern Nation.
From record-low unemployment to a loss of 6 million jobs since the
start of the recession, the U.S. labor market is hemorrhaging.
Ironically, in this climate of unprecedented mass layoffs with expectations of more, American workers are better educated than ever. And yet increasing numbers face a stark reality: nonwage work.
Welcome to Intern Nation, where postgrads pay $9,000
to work for free and serial interns build their skills in back-to-back
unpaid gigs so they can one day secure a paid position with low wages
that may take them years to remedy. It's a world where interns replace employees who go on maternity leave, fill in for an entire staff of let-go workers, and represent brands online in "intern jobs."
So, to recap: my non-profit (not a non-profit in the legal sense, but in the I don't actually make any money doing this sense) website can't hire an intern for the summer, but companies can lay off their entire staff and replace them with unpaid interns? Nowhere in the article does the author comment on how minimum wage laws might affect the legal status of these employees. And I doubt the the former CEOs and Wall Street bigwigs the article talks about are doing it for college credit.
If this is actually illegal, then why are there such things as unpaid job fairs? Is this an open air black market in human trafficking? Are out of work techies selling themselves into slavery? And how much does it cost for a booth?
Meanwhile on Craigslist, a mom recently tried to sell her baby. Stay classy, Craigslist!
*I almost didn't write this after I found the following paragraph in the article:
Economists say there is value in unpaid work but that wage-free labor is
more costly for those with higher consumption commitments. "The fact
that the wage is zero doesn't mean that compensation is zero. Usually,
you gain something," said Columbia professor of economics Till von
Wachter, referring to training, experience, and contacts. "The downside
is that workers need to finance their living somehow."
You needed to speak to an economist for an explanation that people working for free will find it difficult to pay for shit? In other news, scientists have discovered that fire is hot.)
It was love at first sight. Yes, I still remember exactly when I first laid eyes on you. You were so beautiful, so exotic. I could hardly believe you were real. I brought you home, still unsure of my love, but then I tasted you, and I drank you in. God, you were amazing. I had you again and again. I could never get my fill.
But after the move, things haven't been the same between us. You aren't as available as you used to be. I began to see you less and less. And in your place, there appeared another. Different, and yet so similar. And also beautiful and exotic. One day, with you once again nowhere to be found, I gave into temptation. And I'm afraid that I haven't really looked back since.
I'm sorry things had to end this way between us, Diet Cherry Vanilla Dr. Pepper. But the supermarket I go to doesn't stock you, and this weekend you weren't even in Target. And I realized I wasn't sad. Because I had Cherry Coke Zero waiting for me at home.
You know what really grinds my gears? When people refer to places that are north of your current location as down. As in, "We're going down to Kingwood for the weekend," or "Santa went back down to the North Pole." Is Australia called Up Over? No, it is down under! BECAUSE SOUTH IS DOWN.
Here's a map.
See the A? That's Kingwood. See the B? That's Houston. Which direction is Kingwood? WHICH DIRECTION IS KINGWOOD, SUZI?!?!? HUH? WHICH IS IT, KEVIN? THAT. IS. UP. GODDAMMIT.
Here's how you can justify down to Kingwood.
You can hold the map upside down. Except now you live in notsuoH, you're going down to doowgniK, and people say, "Hey, retard, you've got that map upside down."
I'll allow the following exceptions: If you are on top of a mountain, and the bottom of the mountain is north of you, then yes, you can go down to the valley. That is it. And last I checked, Houston was not on top of Mount fucking Everest.
Here were the top 10 search terms on Google 4pm this afternoon.
1. lucy vodden 2. pua aloalo 3. julian lennon 4. beer bike <----- HOLY SHIT WHAT IS A BEER BIKE 5. kendhal beal 6. rapid lash 7. india vs west indies 8. lucy in the sky with diamonds lyrics 9. sq blocks 10. mitch bergenum
This is a beer bike.
10 gentlemen (or awesome, awesome ladies) pedal and drink beer while an 11th sober gentleman steers them around town. They are very popular in Amsterdam. In fact, here are the top 5 most popular things in Amsterdam, as I understand them.
A city with past times like that must be the happiest place on Earth, right? Well, the reason that beer bikes suddenly became such a popular search is because so many of them have been crashing, they might be getting banned:
[T]wo accidents involving the bikes since the start of April has
prompted the city councilor responsible for transport, Hans Gerson, to
investigate how many bikes there are and whether they pose a problem.
"This beer bike is completely legal, but he (Gerson) is not very
enthusiastic about this idea of people drinking while being amongst
traffic," a spokeswoman said.
Shit. If beer bikes get banned in Amsterdam, the most beer lovingest, bike lovingest place on Earth, then what kind of chance do I have to ever own and operate one? Where's my rainbow?
When I decided it was time for this site to employ an intern to take it to the next level, proactively think outside the box, and, if everything worked out right, become the center for a whirlwind sex scandal, the only place I thought about looking was Craigslist. Not wanting to pay $25 for a professional posting, I tossed this ad up in the "creative gigs" section. It was there for approximately 45 minutes before it was flagged for removal.
What the fuck, right? I got lots of feedback on what the problem might be. I took out the word ass. I removed the part where I only wanted to hire pretty girls (sigh). Rejected, again and again. Enraged by this escalation, I returned the favor by declaring Craigslist my enemy. After one last attempt at posting, I received the following helpful email from professional busybody Ryan Kaczmarek, who I assumes spending his days scouring Craigslist for terms-of-use violations:
Ryan Kaczmarek to gigs-f5ade-1206962788@craigslist.org:
federal law requires interns to be PAID!! do your
homework.
Could this be true? Haven't we all heard of unpaid internships before? I followed up:
jesse to Ryan Kaczmarek:
what do you call it when somebody works for you for free?
Ryan Kaczmarek to jesse:
a cheap ass who wont pay.. an intern also gets school
credit.. that's what its for.
jesse to Ryan Kaczmarek:
no, a cheap ass who won't pay is what -I- am. What do you call the person who is working for free?
Ryan Kaczmarek to jesse:
an idiot
jesse to Ryan Kaczmarek:
so I should post on craigslist that I am looking for an idiot? also, I was wondering if you'd be interested in becoming
ObscureCraft's legal advisor? I won't pay you anything, obviously, but
I figured since you already seemed pretty fond of giving your opinion
out for free, would do it on a regular basis
I haven't heard back yet. The offer is still on the table, Ryan!
So I put it to you, readers: have you ever heard such a thing? Is having an unpaid intern illegal? Is it still illegal if I don't actually make any money on this site? Do I need to hide my penny in earnings from the IRS to make it legal? Ryan, anybody, help me out here.
Hot on the heels of last night, we come back with the first psuedo-voting off in the summer season of So You Think You Can Dance. We start off with a group dance set to the increasingly ubiquitous Boom Boom Pow by the Black Eyed Peas aka "you so two thousand and late". The main standout here are the costumes, at least on the women, as they are exceedingly tight and the dance prominently features ass shaking. Yeah, I'm going to objectify the women almost as much as Jesse. Deal with it.
[Yesterday, 89-year-old World War II veteran, and member of the greatest generation, James Von Brunn shot two people in the US Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC, killing a security guard. To match the somberness of the event, we're going to drop the one-liners and do this one late-night monologue style.]
So, did everybody hear about this? An 89 year old man shot two people at the Holocaust Museum yesterday. Yup, true story. A witness told police that it totally took all the fun out of his visit.
The 89 year old man was able to shoot two people because witnesses thought they were watching an interactive exhibit.
And it turns out the accused shooter, James Von Brunn, was a noted Holocaust denier. Yup, which made me think: if a Holocaust denier shoots somebody at the Holocaust museum, did it really happen?
To honor the event, the Holocaust museum is setting up a special wing devoted to Holocaust museum survivors. Thanks, everybody, we've got a great show tonight! David Carradine is here! We'll be right back.
So You Think You Can Dance, the summer reality competition show you absolutely should be watching, has made it through the audition stage and is ready to get down to business. I celebrate with a recap. Don't watch? Don't give two shits? Don't worry, I only plan on doing this for tonight.
We're going to go couple by couple with my thoughts, and a thought or two from Suzi thrown in as well. Buckle up.
-----
Jeanine and Phillip
Phillip is what I call a Legacy - we've seen him in previous seasons trying out. He's the best popper the show has ever found, and, like all poppers before him, will do poorly outside of his genre, skate by on the strength of his solos for a few weeks, but not make the top 10 - he's Hok from a few years ago, right down to the Legacy status. Jeanine is an unknown, but meets the first criteria for any good SYTYCD female performer: I want to have sexual intercourse with her.
They get a routine choreagraphed by Tabitha and Napoleon (no last names), which means wuss hip-hop. But damn if they didn't use Phillip to his potential - I didn't even look at whats-her-name. HOW DOES HE DO THAT WITH HIS ARMS WHERE ARE HIS BONES. These guys fly through week 1.
Jerry Ferro (Adam Carolla) is staring down the barrel of his 40th birthday. The once-promising amateur boxer is now filling out his days with construction work, and giving boxing lessons to middle-class shlubs.
When a respected boxing coach brings him in to spar a few rounds with an up-and-coming pro, Jerry surprises everybody, including himself, by knocking the guy down with a single punch. And so begins Jerry's journey out of the doldrums of his life, and back into the ring one. Last. Time.
(One of the irritating things about mentioning something like this is that somebody will be tempted to say, "Anti-Semite!" which, of course, isn't true. Some Israelis, in this particular case, are unbelievably stupid.)
Last week, Dr. George Tiller, one of only three doctors in the country who performed third-trimester abortions, was gunned down by Scott Roeder. From jail, Scott Roeder called the Associated Press to cryptically warn them that "more attacks were coming." OC contributor Kevin joined a chorus of other bloggers in making the following observation:
As you read this, we have in custody an extremely dangerous terrorist
who is guilty beyond any doubt, having attempted to blow up a building
and murdered a civilian. But while he's in custody, he has a support
ring of other extremists, and is gloating that more attacks are coming.
I have now been struck by another source of hypocrisy in this case, as voiced by Slate.com writer William Saletan:
If abortion is murder, the most efficient thing you could have done to
prevent such murders this month was to kill George Tiller. [...] If a doctor in Kansas were butchering hundreds of old or disabled
people, and legal authorities failed to intervene, I doubt most members
of the National Right to Life Committee would stand by waiting for
"educational and legislative activities" to stop him. Somebody would
use force. The reason these pro-life groups have held their fire,
both rhetorically and literally, is that they don't really equate
fetuses with old or disabled people.
[...] You think you're pro-life. You tell yourself that abortion is
murder. Maybe you even say that when a pollster calls. But like most of
the other people who say such things in polls, you don't mean it
literally. There's you, and then there are the people who lock arms
outside the clinics. And then there are the people who bomb them. And
at the end of the line, there's the guy who killed George Tiller. If
you don't accept what he did, then maybe it's time to ask yourself what
you really believe. Is abortion murder? Or is it something less, a
tragedy that would be better avoided?
Look, you may not believe it from my posts, but I am a professional writer. I get paid to write shit. Every week. Seriously, and while I'm not pulling in Trump bucks, I ain't living in poverty.
So, when someone takes something that I've written, and claims it as their own -- or simply posts it without credit -- I get upset. Copyright infringement may not be as bad as plagiarism, but it still sucks. Look, let's face it, not many people read this blog.... so we need all the help we can get.
ObscureCraft is published under the Creative Commons License -- so, you can post anything you see here to message boards and the like, but you just have to link back. Seriously, because if you think "Egg Foo Hung Himself" is as funny as I do (mad props to Jesse for coming up with that one), then link back to where you go it from. Because you might find other things that are posted here funny, and then more people read our blog, and Jesse makes more than a penny on Google ads, and can afford to actually pay an intern in DCVDP. (That's Diet Cherry Vanilla Dr. Pepper, motherfuckers)
I don't know if anyone reading this watches a little show called South Park. I used to not watch it, but then Jesse told me I should start again and I'm a better person for it. Last season, our favorite Crippled Comedian, Jimmy (very much), came up with the best joke ever. "Do you like fish sticks?" "Yes!" "What are you, some sort of gay fish?" (I even riffed on this on the comments on the Carradine jokes). Except, Eric Cartman took all the credit. And poor little Jimmy was crushed. And Kanye was a gay fish. Anyway, don't take my word for it -- Trey & Matt are awesome enough to allow you to watch any episode of South Park for free, so head on over to South Park Studios and watch "Fishsticks" from season 13.
Pretty fucking funny, right? Probably funnier than some of the David Carradine jokes (I'm ashamed that such a poor joke as "They don't hang elephants in Thailand" is making the rounds... that one sucked, it was mine, my bad.)
So, this is a message to the readers of Filecabi, Pirate4x4.com, and Survivalist -- if you liked those jokes, check out this blog... and if you like the other shit here, post it, but link back. We'll always do the same for you.
Nobody asked me, but I'm relatively certain that the above represents the peak of human artistic achievement. Literally nothing created before, and nothing that will be created until the end of time, will ever even be close.
Please also note that the zombies here appear to the slow variety, which is also known as the right variety. For those of you who like faster, sprinting zombies, you're wrong, and I'm embarrassed that you exist.
The Discovery Channel has aired an episode of their show Mega-Engineering that proposed to build a giant geodesic dome over the city of Houston. The stated purpose of the dome, other than to continue to make engineers look ridiculous, is to protect the city from hurricanes.
Huh, that's weird. Doesn't it look like there is a bunch of stuff outside the dome that remains unprotected? Because the proposed dome (which I swear I am not making up, this is a real fucking idea somewhere) would only cover downtown.
If you actually had unlimited resources to protect Houston from hurricanes and reduce the city's energy consumption, you would bury as many power lines underground as possible; build the goddamn light rail that was approved 6 years ago, along with the proposed commuter rail system to reduce energy use and facilitate rapid evacuation; and fund energy efficiency improvements in as many buildings as possible. But that doesn't get you an episode of Mega Engineering, does it?
Engineering isn't sexy unless you are building a bridge across the ocean, or a dome over a city, or sending spaceships to Jupiter controlled by insane computers. The time and effort that went into producing even a concept for a dome to seal downtown Houston off from the elements was engineering masturbation. It might be fun while you are doing it, but when you broadcast it on the Discovery Channel, you should be embarrassed.
This is a picture of a co-workers daughter. Now she is on the internet, which is forever. It is my hope that she becomes famous as the girl with the greatest nose pick of all time.
Two knuckles deep! Marvel at the commitment to her craft.
I was introduced to the concept of an aptronym at a young and tender age, when my dad was represented in a minor legal matter involving alleged assault on a police officer by a lawyer named Jeff Advokat.
What? You want to hear the story about my dad assaulting a police officer? TOO BAD WE ARE TALKING ABOUT APTRONYMS.
Get it? Lawyer named Advokat? I know, that is gold! Way more interesting than hearing about how the officer tried to force his way into our apartment, and then accused my dad of assaulting him with the door when he closed it on him.
That aptronym was good enough that I actually got it included in Timothy Noah's "Aptronym Watch" feature on Slate.com a couple of years ago. Unfortunately, Mr. Noah seems to have abandoned his post. If he was still maintaining the aptronym yellow pages, we would have a new entry tonight: Josh Outman, a pitcher for the Oakland A's.
Outman! His job is to get outs! That is classic. Like the time the cops were outside my apartment, threatening to fire tear gas through the windows if my dad didn't come out.
Wake up America! As you read this, we have in custody an extremely dangerous terrorist who is guilty beyond any doubt, having attempted to blow up a building and murdered a civilian. But while he's in custody, he has a support ring of other extremists, and is gloating that more attacks are coming.
This is literally the closest we've ever come to a ticking time bomb scenario, so I expect every single columnist who's supported waterboarding to have a column, blog post, or hell I'll even take a tweet, out on the necessity of torturing Scott Roeder within the day.
The spot: Kobe and Lebron are roommates, and also puppets. Puppet Lebron takes a phone call from their neighbor, Mrs. Lewis. They have to babysit Lil Desmond while she is out. What follows is a series of vignettes of home life for puppet Lebron and Kobe, as interrupted by the incessant chatter of Lil Desmond: puppet Lebron and Kobe play video games, lift weights, hang out and grill by the pool, have a cozy lunch, and read quietly. Lil Desmond is finally silenced when puppet Lebron and Kobe show him their shoe warehouse, where he stares with quiet awe and takes a pull from his inhaler. puppet Lebron and Kobe share a knowing glance.
I am only going to mention briefly how embarrassing this series of ads must be for Nike now that Lebron failed to come through with his part in the inevitable pairing of the present (Kobe) and future (Lebron) superstars of the NBA. That, ultimately, is not my interest in these ads, particularly this most recent one. I am more fascinated by the depiction of puppet Kobe and Lebron's life together.
Take the ad above, and remove Lil Desmond from the picture. Lebron and Kobe play video games together, work out together, hang out shirtless by the pool together, and enjoy lunch in a cozy nook somewhere in the apartment together. Is this how a couple of roommates spend their time? Or are they, you know... "roommates?"
I have anticipated this reaction: Jesse, is there any advertisement in which you don't see homosexuality? Hey, I'm just calling them like I see them. And what I see is a couple of presumably male puppets living together, sharing every waking moment.
Once you see it, you can't unsee it. This ad is now Kobe dealing with his lover Lebron while he tweaks out on crystal meth. This ad features clips of Kobe (aka the Black Mamba, the gayest nickname of all time) over a thumping dance beat you would hear in a gay dance club. And you know this ended with puppet Kobe and Lebron collapsing into each others arms for some rough, sweaty, gay puppet sex.
My relationship with reality television has been, at best, strained. I routinely find myself screaming things at the television like, "You can't be serious! How does this person/profession/activity deserve its own show?!?!?" Then my kids start crying and I have to calm down.
But really: Parking Wars? Showbiz Moms & Dads? King of Cars? Was the American public clamoring for these shows? Was John Q. Public really sitting there, seething, thinking, "Dammit, I want fewer shows, and more compelling television about Beverly Hills Matchmakers!" (I suppose I should acknowledge my own weaknesses, like The Anna Nicole Show, but had I known we'd end up with everybody getting a reality show, I wouldn't have watched.)
Still, my head nearly exploded yesterday when I saw the first preview for Bravo's NYC Prep. One of the truly bizarre things about these reality shows is how often they focus not on genuinely interesting people but instead pay attention to the machinations of the fabulously wealthy. I'm relatively certain that these people are being put on television at least in part to make the rest of us rise up in an aggressive class war certain to make Lenin smile approvingly. How else can anybody explain a cadre of rich kids who attend New York City prep schools - which are, of course, themselves fantastically expensive to gain access to - then getting a reality television show about their lives.
What sort of "interesting" lives can these kids even live? "Tune in next week as Monica withdraws yet another $10,000 out of an ATM to buy herself a valuable watch that she'll inevitably lose later that night without being troubled by the whole spectacle!" Who wants to watch that?
Meanwhile, I was mowing the lawn yesterday letting my mind wander when it dawned on me that these kids are the children of the titans of industry that have danced all over our economy. And they're getting their own television show to celebrate their excesses. Earlier, I joked about the impending classwar, but the more I think about it, the better it sounds. Which is why I need to warm up the flamethrower...
Just so we are clear, Craigslist, you had no problem with this ad?
KANNAPOLIS, N.C. -- Craigslist is drawing new scrutiny after a North Carolina man was charged with
using the popular online classified site to fulfill his own fantasy by
finding someone to rape his wife at knifepoint while he watched.
The woman said Thursday she has been "traumatized" by the attack, which
she did not know about ahead of time. It happened a month after
Craigslist agreed to overhaul its policing of sex ads following a
slaying in Massachusetts.
And this guy was free to use your service?
BOSTON - A Boston medical student accused of targeting women who
advertised exotic services on Craigslist was ordered held without bail
Tuesday on charges that he sought to rob a masseuse, but bashed her in
the head and shot her through the heart when she fought back.
But I can't have a goddamn INTERN?
Your posting has been flagged for removal.
Approximately 98% of postings removed are in violation of craigslist posting guidelines.
Please make sure you are abiding by all posted site rules, including our terms of use:
If you need help figuring out why your posting was flagged, try asking in our flag help forum: http://forums.craigslist.org/?forumID=3. Include posting title, body, category, city, how often posted, any images, HTML markup, etc.
If your posting was wrongly flagged down (2% of flagged ads are) please accept our apologies and feel free to repost.
Sorry for the hassle, and thanks for your understanding.
Approximately 98% are in violation of craigslist posting guidelines, huh? Well, approximately 100% of this is bullshit. I even reposted in the ad without the word in ass in it, and IT. GOT. TAKEN. DOWN. A. SECOND. FUCKING. TIME. FUCK. YOU. CRAIGSLIST.
If I promise to rape and murder my intern, can I have one then? You assholes.
I will give you the exact moment that the Final Destination franchise reached its peak*. It was in Final Destination 2, when the airbag went off, and then the barbed wire went flying. If you've seen it, you know exactly what I'm talking about.
Now, I will give you the exact moment that the Final Destination franchise went somewhere that I cannot follow. It is at about the 1:35 mark in the following video, which is the trailer for the fourth movie in the franchise, titled The Final Destination (hey, I think we found one of the missing definite articles from Fast and Furious!)
I saw the boy pulled to the bottom of the pool by the filter pump, and immediately shuddered. The reason is a short story by Chuck Palahniuk, called "Guts."
Palahniuk opens his book Haunted (a short story anthology) with a story about a boy and a pool called "Guts". Not much upsets me, but the story about the boy and the pool upset me. According to Palahniuk, I am not alone. He writes in the epilogue to Haunted:
On the promotional tour for my novel Diary, I read "Guts" for the first time in public. This was in a crowded bookstore in Portland, Oregon. [...]
It wasn't until I'd signed the last book that a clerk said two people had fainted. Two young men. They'd both dropped to the concrete floor during "Guts," but they were fine now. With no memory of anything between standing, listening, and waking up surrounded by people's feet.
[...] In all, 73 people have fainted while I've read "Guts." Over the internet, I now hear stories of other people making their peers pass out by reading it aloud. So that number keeps growing.
Is this just an urban legend perpetuated by Palahniuk for his own selfish, commercial reasons? Possibly. But the thing about any successful urban legend is that there is a nugget of truth. I read "Guts," and I didn't faint. But when Palahniuk says 73 people fainted while he read it, I thought for a moment, and nodded. Yeah, I could see that.
If the words are enough to make a man faint, or make me believe they could make a man faint, then I'm afraid that I won't be able to watch a movie that threatens to act out the words on the page. Sorry, The Final Destination. Looks like my stop is right here.
*Prior to The Final Destination, the franchise reached its nadir in Final Destination 3, when the heroine explains her "the pictures predict where Death will strike" theory by displaying a picture of the Twin Towers with the shadow of a plane on them. Really, FD? We're invoking 9/11 for cheesy horror movies now? When I get around to writing my list about the most inappropriate uses of 9/11 in popular culture, you and CSI: New York will have a battle royale for the top spot.
[Too Soon is a new feature where, immediately after a tragic news event, Jim and I will exchange emails with our best attempt to make inappropriate jokes about it. Today's event is the death of David Carradine, who hung himself during an act of autoerotic asphyxiation. Please note that the jokes have not started yet. Thank you.]
Q: What is David Carradine's favorite game? A: Hangman
Q: Is it true that David Carradine is hung like an elephant? A: No, they don't hang elephants in Thailand.
Q: What do David Carradine and black men have in common? A: They are both well hung.
Q: What's the difference between David Carradine and Heath Ledger? A: Nothing, now.
Q: What is David Carradine's favorite Chinese food dish? A: Egg foo hung myself.
Q: Why didn't David Carradine cross the road? A: Because he hung himself last night.
[And since we didn't start this feature soon enough, this Air France joke is already a little dated. Sorry!]
Q: What do you get when you cross a Brazilian pilot with a French aircraft? A: Debris floating in the Atlantic.
UNABLE TO FIND WORK FOR THE SUMMER? SITTING AROUND YOUR PARENTS
BASEMENT WITH YOUR THUMB UP YOUR ASS? HAVE YOU CONSIDERED AN UNPAID
INTERNSHIP AT AN UP AND COMING WEBSITE???
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DON'T DO NOTHING THIS SUMMER! PAD THAT RESUME WITH AN UNPAID INTERNSHIP!!
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it's NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests
In an attempt to reachout to disaffected voters disenchanted with the Republican message, the Grand Old Party has released a new website to help solve your problems. Check out the GOP Problem Solver.
I was sick all morning yesterday so I missed the whole Nintendo conference, but as I understand it Nintendo's conference was boring as hell. They announced two new Mario games, Super Mario Galaxy 2 and a 2-d, four player sidescroller coming out this Fall. Galaxy sounded better before finding out that it was, in its creators words, 'mostly new levels' to go with reused ones from the original game. The sidescroller sounds pretty neat though, even if it's a shameless reaction to Little Big Planet.
John Sterling has been the radio voice of the New York Yankees since I can remember. It wasn't until I was in college, however, until I realized how terrible he was.
You can't really blame him. If you've ever listened to a Yankees broadcast, there is nothing quite like it. Every single thing that happens in the game has a sponsorship that Sterling has to read. The first pitch is brought to you by Geico. The first hit is brought to you by Entergy. The third inning is the Triple Play Inning, brought to you by the Comcast Triple Play package, where if the Yankees turn a triple play, one lucky listener will get free Comcast service for a year. Sometimes he doesn't get around to reading this one until there is already an out, rendering the possibility of a triple play impossible. And so on.
But he also does it to himself. Much like Victor Martinez's personalized handshakes for every player, John Sterling has a personalized home run call for every player. When Jeter hits one, Sterling shouts: "EL CAPITAN!" When Robinson Cano hits one, he cries: "Robbie Cano! Dontcha know!" Melky Cabrera gets "The Melkman delivers!" And Alex Rodriguez gets, "An A-bomb! From A-Rod!"
So he can be forgiven for screwing up once in awhile. But less forgivable is shouting out, "It's an A-bomb!" after a homer hit by Hideki Matsui. You know, the guy from Japan. A-bomb. Japan. A-bomb. Japan. Why does that ring a bell?
And if you think that's bad, just wait for the 5 full seconds of awkward, awkward silence that follows.
["Dear Abby" is a syndicated column published weekly. For the original column, click here.]
DEAR ABBY OC: After my wife had our sixth child, our love life fizzled out. But at age 80, we have suddenly discovered that we aren't THAT old!
How do we tactfully deflect kids and grandkids who enter without ringing the bell? I realize that lots of people would love to have this problem, but it's a problem all the same. -- BACK IN THE SADDLE AGAIN
I used to think the only definition of irony was when you sold your gold watch to buy your wife combs for Christmas, only to find out that she cut off all of her long, beautiful hair in order to sell it to buy you a watch fob for your gold watch.
Apparently, that is not the only definition. From our friends at dictionary.com:
i-ro-ny
[ahy-ruh-nee, ahy-er-]
-noun, plural -nies.
1.
the use of words to convey a meaning that is the opposite of its literal meaning: the irony of her reply, "How nice!" when I said I had to work all weekend.
2.
Literature.
a.
a technique of indicating, as through character or plot development, an intention or attitude opposite to that which is actually or ostensibly stated.
b.
(esp. in contemporary writing) a manner of organizing a work so as to give full expression to contradictory or complementary impulses, attitudes, etc., esp. as a means of indicating detachment from a subject, theme, or emotion.
...but Big Papi started taking steroids after he was traded to the Red Sox.
David Ortiz, homer runs by year
And if Major League Baseball had found an impartial person to conduct an investigation into steroids instead of George Mitchell, a minority owner of the Boston Red Sox, then this conversation would be over by now.
Even Simmons admits as much as this:
The steroid whispers started quickly. By late April, every conversation
I had with a Sox fan seemed to include a "We need to mail Papi some
HGH" joke. It was an easy leap for a couple of reasons: First, his
power numbers leapt like Obama's Q rating from 2003 to 2007. Second,
he's Dominican, and more than a few of his brethren -- Sammy Sosa,
Miguel Tejada, Guillermo Mota -- have been in the center of PED
controversies. Third, they sell steroids over the counter in the DR
like they're Bubblicious.
That list of 104 names of players who failed a confidential drug test in 2003? You know, the one that had Alex Rodriguez's name on it, which was leaked, but somehow not a single other player was? David Ortiz's name is on that list. I guarantee it. And the only reason MLB won't release the names is because Bud Selig is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Boston Red Sox.
This week is E3, or the Electronics Entertainment Expo, a.k.a. the biggest nerd orgy around. For one week all the video gaming developers and publishers get together in an undoubtedly awful smelling auditorium and show off all the cool shit they've been working on. Today marks Day 1, with Microsoft, EA, and Ubisoft delivering keynote speeches. Being a giant nerd myself, I've taken on the responsibility of reading poorly written liveblogs, tweets, and other communications from the gaming world and summing them up for you, the sophisticated ObscureCraft reader. You're welcome.
To start things off, they showed a demo of Rock Band: The Beatles. It looks pretty neat, with three part vocal harmonies, graphics that change based on the era of the song being played, and DLC. Also Microsoft apparently paid absolute truckloads of money, since "All You Need is Love" will be Xbox exclusive downloadable content. However, to try and avoid the karmic backlash they're donating all the money to Doctors Without Borders. Oh and Ringo and Paul were there to say the game was great and not play it or sing or do anything interesting.
After that, they showed off some neat games mostly involving shooting things and driving other things, and if you're the kind of person who really cares about the details you won't be relying on this so whatever. Then Alan Wake, which is a neat looking horror-ish game that's been in development for so long that the first concept art was actually done by Leonardo Da Vinci. However this time they swear it'll be out next year. Sure.
They also announced a lot of dumb garbage that nobody cares about, like Facebook and Twitter integration. Why would you want to do any of that with a controller on your couch? There's also '1080p live, no wait, no download' content on demand but I don't even understand how that would work so I'm assuming there's fine print somewhere. And they're hooking into last.fm which will actually be pretty awesome if it lets you use it while you're actually playing games.
Then they went into some crazy-ass Minority Report shit. To compete with the Wii, they revealed Natal, which as far as I can tell an incredibly beefed up Wii sensor bar that includes a video camera and sound recognition. It can recognize speech, faces, and movement without requiring any kind of controller at all. So it will supposedly instantly scan your face and log you in appropriately. You can use Minority Report gestures to control menus, including Netflix, and shout commands wildly, much like the Suze does now, only it will actually work in a way that's not 'someone in the room just does it''. Supposedly. Basically if any of this works I'd be amazed. They showed off some demos that sure seem to work, including a particularly amazing one called Milo that is pretty clearly the birth of Skynet.
No video yet but it's a small child that talks to you, recognizes your face, and can even tell by your voice and facial expressions your emotional state. It appeared to understand conversation clearly but that's almost assuredly just a slick prepared demo since language recognition is still a ways off. He's hanging out by a pool, and the demoer reached out to the water, and it showed her reflection, and then splashing around in it. They had Steven Spielberg out to talk about how it was the best thing since he invented sliced bread too. So basically if it works, it'll be amazing, but that's a huge if and we're porbably seeing the next hilarious flop live..
[Ed. note: I will not call this feature "The Obscure YouTube Video Spotlight" because by the time a YouTube video comes to my attention, it has been seen by at least 100,000 other people first.]
Lawrence Lessig is the author of Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy. He argues that copyright law no longer suits the needs of the digital age, and should be modified to allow creative re-purposing of copyrighted work. While making his case (and selling his book) on The Colbert Report, Stephen Colbert invited viewers to remix the interview. With some great dance beats.
Okay, got the idea? Good. Angry that I thought you needed to have this crazy idea of a "re-mix" explained to you? Complain about it on your own blog, joem!
The remixed video I really want to share is a mash-up of Lil' Jon and Lazy Town, a children's television show from Iceland.
Now you will suffer with this song in your head all day, just as I have! HAHA YOU FOOLS!
What manner of robot is this? What is he going to transform into? What is its fucking problem with Shia LaBeouf? Is the robot taking a poop? What is with the things dangling near its robot buttocks (robuttocks)? Does it have hemorrhoids? Why is everything so dusty? When the robot is in action, am I going to be able to tell it apart from the other robots? Will I be able to tell its ass apart from its face? HOW DID THEY MANAGE TO FUCK UP A MOVIE ABOUT GIANT ROBOTS FROM SPACE THAT ARE ALSO TRUCKS?!?
Bonus explanation: Why is the Suze so excited for this movie?
"Former Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-CO), who spent his career in Congress calling for a moratorium on immigration, appeared on CNN to lambaste Sotomayor for belonging to a group whose name would translate as "The Race," made the false claim that La Raza has the motto, "All for the race, nothing for the rest," and bashed it as being "a Latino KKK without the hoods or the nooses."" Tom Tancredo, Thursday
In response to the question: "Do you agree [with Rush Limbaugh's assertion] that the Obama Administration hates white people?":
"I have no idea if they hate white people or not. But I will tell you this, I am sick of having people suggest that because I am Caucasian, I cannot -- and that's the suggestion here -- is that if you are white, Caucasian, male, you cannot comment on this sort of thing." - Tom Tancredo, Friday
Well I'm sure that there's no personal animosity here, surely it's just a cold game being played for political points. Wait, what's this in the paper today?
"On July 7, 2007, at approximately 7:15 p.m. at Jefferson and M Street, Northwest, in Washington, D.C., defendant was walking down the street making offensive remarks when he encountered the complainant, Ms. [REDACTED], who is African-American. The defendant uttered, "Nigger," as he delivered a karate chop to Ms. [REDACTED]'s head."
And who is this defendent? Why none other than Marcus Epstein, the Executive Director of Tancredo's political action committee, who plead guilty to the charges today. And I'm sure now you're worried about the PC police coming in to punish him, a blatant act of reverse racism, but don't worry he's keeping his job until he leaves for law school in the fall.
South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford has finally turned up after being missing for an entire week. Nobody knew where he was. Some of his staff speculated he might be in hiking the Appalachian Trail. His wife didn't know where he was, only saying that she was unconcerned and he is "
[Warning: the following article makes liberal use of the C word]
The Film
