i think they're onto something.

in this link!

3E approves

The History of Rome. It's great overall, but Mike Duncan really won our hearts when he explained that "the maniple* system was based around the principle of time-release freshness." I have listened through the episodes covering the Second Punic War, and he's up to Constantine, so I don't know if I will catch up before he finishes.

As long as we're doing history podcasts, we also approve of 12 Byzantine Rulers (completed) and BackStory (ongoing).

*spellchecker does not recognize this as a word, or at least it did not until I added it to the dictionary.

3e webcomix click on it won't be blurry do it

i like the part where the puppets get killed

UPDATE: apparently you've got to click one ol extra click. CLICK!

layin' down some knowledge

Guys like this are why people don't like organized religion.



‎"We got the President of the United States, probably pees sitting down."

Ranking the Southeastern Conference by mascot

Please be advised that I do not limit this list to just the guy in a suit on the sidelines, or just the name, but include the whole mascot experience. As such, the rankings are:

1. Florida Gators: The Gators hit most of the important mascot goals. It's immediately recognizable, tangible, and associated with Florida. The Gator mascot logo thing looks tight, and the gator mascot makes for that fun chomp motion. Alligators are vicious beasts, and that's good for a mascot. Florida lacks only an actual alligator (which they used to have) to make them the best mascot ever.

2. Arkansas Razorbacks: Like Florida, but less so. Razorbacks are associate with Arkansas, I guess. The kids' version is named "Pork Chop," which is adorable but I can imagine leads to some uncomfortable conversations. The inflatable Boss Hog is almost as stupid as that inflatable Nebraska Cornhusker. The "running hog" image is solid, and those hats are fun. Razorbacks are big and mean animals, which is a good fit for competitive athletics (particularly for football).

3. South Carolina Gamecocks: The costumed "Cocky" is an absolute turd of a stuffed animal, but actual Gamecocks are awesome, mean animals. Cockfighting is a reprehensible sport, so I suppose I'm endorsing roosters in general here. Also, that nickname comes from the Revolutionary War, which is a plus.

4. Tennessee Volunteers: Tennessee only gets up this high because of the originality factor and because I really like the live Smokey. The costumed smokey isn't particularly impressive, but neither is it particularly objectionable. "Volunteers" also gets points for having a clear connection to the state of Tennessee.

5. Vanderbilt Commodores: Commodores is a distinctive nickname, and it's clearly connected to Vanderbilt University. They are lower than Tennessee because Mr. Commodore is terrible. Old dudes are not intimidating, evenly if they're weirdly muscled.

6. (tie) Auburn Tigers and LSU Tigers: Normally, a generic name like "Tigers" would get these two lower, but a couple of things are in their favor. First, "Tigers" is such a commonly used mascot because tigers are awesome. Second, both teams have live mascots that are among the best in the country. Auburn's stuffed Aubie is way better than LSU's stuffed Mike the Tiger, who looks frightened or perhaps incontinent, but LSU has stronger thematic mascot unity, so call it a tie.

8. (tie) Georgia Bulldogs and Mississippi State Bulldogs: Like a lesser Auburn/LSU. Bulldogs are less vicious than Tigers, and it's an equally generic selection. Georgia's obsession with their mascot's lineage is rather pathetic and probably a telling indication of their own uncertainty and inner doubt.

10. Ole Miss Rebels: It's one thing to be silly redneck neoconfederates, it's another to be silly redneck neoconfederates without convictions. The Rebel Black Bear is just Smokey the Bear in gray. If they had picked Admiral Ackbar or this, Ole Miss would be much higher on this list.

11. Alabama Crimson Tide: At least it's original. But what is a Crimson Tide? Is it frightening? Is it a fungus I should be concerned about catching? How is it related to the silly stuffed elephant?

12. Kentucky Wildcats: Almost as generic as "Tigers," but with a boiled down, less impressive version. Also, their totally non-threatening, personality-free mascot costume was even more weakified to make a kids' version.

Rob Zombie's Woolite commercial

if you're at bottletree tonite...

Tha Captainz bro's band is playing. I didn't find out he was in a new band until the other day. I then promptly had a dream that I went to see them and they covered this song, which is (I'm pretty sure) very, very farfetched.

Illegal alien

I decided then that I could never give anyone reason to doubt I was an American. I convinced myself that if I worked enough, if I achieved enough, I would be rewarded with citizenship. I felt I could earn it.

I’ve tried. Over the past 14 years, I’ve graduated from high school and college and built a career as a journalist, interviewing some of the most famous people in the country. On the surface, I’ve created a good life. I’ve lived the American dream.

But I am still an undocumented immigrant. And that means living a different kind of reality. It means going about my day in fear of being found out. It means rarely trusting people, even those closest to me, with who I really am. It means keeping my family photos in a shoebox rather than displaying them on shelves in my home, so friends don’t ask about them. It means reluctantly, even painfully, doing things I know are wrong and unlawful. And it has meant relying on a sort of 21st-century underground railroad of supporters, people who took an interest in my future and took risks for me.

My Life as an Undocumented Immigrant

EEE Spring Meeting Report

Success!

sunhine deh yah, time fi de busrida

3e webcomix click on it won't be blurry do it

so there was this dude. he wanted to be different. so he made music that sounded like this:



and sometimes this!

then he killed this other dude!

they put his ass away!



in prison there are no screeeeamin guitarz. just some faggy keyboardz.



two whole albums of that!

then they let him out and he made some other stuff. whatever.

you are getting SLEEPY

Persistence Hunting

The pronghorn is the second-fastest animal on earth, while the men are merely elite marathon runners who are trying to verify a theory about human evolution. Some scientists believe that our ancestors evolved into endurance athletes in order to hunt quad­rupeds by running them to exhaustion. If the theory holds up, the antelope I'm watching will eventually tire and the men will catch it. Then they'll have to decide whether to kill it for food or let it go.

"I've harvested a ton of pronghorn," bellows Peter Romero, a camo-clad, 260-pound New Mexican big-game guide who's standing next to me, squinting into a spotting scope. "But never this way." Romero, who speaks in the calibrated tongue of the modern sportsman, has "harvested" nearly every species in the New Mexico big-game handbook and isn't shy about showing off cell-phone pics of his trophies. He's also Outside's former building manager, and when he heard we wanted to see if a group of marathoners who live and train near 7,000-foot-high Santa Fe could catch an antelope, he offered to help.

Among other services, the tireless Romero showed the runners where to find antelope-hunting permits—they paid $985 for a tag on Craigslist—and explained a few laws the men would have to obey. They'd be required to stay within the roughly five square miles of ranchland we'd received permission to use, and they could pursue only a male antelope with horns taller than its ears. Assuming they actually succeeded in chasing a buck to the point of exhaustion and still felt the resolve to kill it, a licensed hunter would dispatch the animal with a pistol shot. The use of a gun or bow is required, since New Mexico doesn't allow human-hurled projectiles, sticks, or bare hands to be used as hunting weapons.

Fair Chase

I wake up in a malaise, and I walk here and there

To get Alvin Holmes out of your mind, here's 3E hero Norm Macdonald with a joke about a moth.

sigh

3E Certified Villain Alvin Holmes makes a stupid appearance.



"What is M E A D mead? Wha- Wha- What is that?"

Of course, it failed.

pulpbard

"Welcome to the Pulp Shakespeare Project, devoted to the reconstruction of William Shakespeare's play A Slurry Tale, which curiously resembles Quentin Tarantino's film Pulp Fiction. There is no way to stop this from happening, so this wiki exists to ensure that it is done well, or as well as it can be."

sample:

Vincent: And know'st thou what the French name cottage pie?
Julius: Say they not cottage pie, in their own tongue?
Vincent: But nay, their tongues, for speech and taste alike
Are strange to ours, with their own history:
Gaul knoweth not a cottage from a house.
Julius: What say they then, pray?
Vincent: Hachis Parmentier.
Julius: Hachis Parmentier! What name they cream?
Vincent: Cream is but cream, only they say la crème.
Julius: What do they name black pudding?
Vincent: I know not;
I visited no inn where't could be bought.

Ignore the bores and their laws

3e webcomix click on it won't be blurry do it

less funny!

counterpoint to literally unbelievable.

Cold case

The body of a 29-year-old nurse and three-month newlywed, Sherri Rasmussen, had been discovered by her husband, John Ruetten. When Ruetten, an engineer, had come home from work at 5:55 p.m., he’d known instantly that something was wrong. The garage door was open and the silver two-door BMW he’d bought Rasmussen as an engagement gift was gone. It seemed strange that she would not be home; he knew she had called in sick to work that morning.

When Ruetten rushed inside, he found his wife’s body in the ransacked living room. Shards from a broken porcelain vase littered the floor. A TV wall unit was partially collapsed. A credenza drawer had been yanked out and its contents, mostly documents, dumped on the floor.

Examining the scene, the lead homicide detective, Lyle Mayer, began to piece together what he thought had taken place. Burglars must have entered through the unlocked front door. While one removed electronics from the wall unit, the other went upstairs and was surprised by Rasmussen. Her attire—robe, T-shirt, and panties—suggested she had not been expecting visitors.

The Lazarus File

Into my eye-eye-eyes

3e webcomix click on it won't be blurry do it

West Virginia's football coach

So, all the hoo-ha going on at West Virginia is pretty interesting:

"He tried to flame-throw the guy in December by calling me and at least one other reporter because the other reporter and I discussed it. [Stewart] said, can you get the word, I think it was scumbag or something, tattooed on the front of the sports page? You need to dig up this dirt; you need to get it out on this guy. And I said, 'Hey man, I'm not a part of some witch hunt.' But I understood the guy was like backed in a corner and was in a tight spot."

Well. One of the CBS CFB blogger guys satirically recommends firing the current guys (recall that WVa coach-in-waiting Dana Holgorsen seems to have something of a drinking problem) and hiring a fresh old face

Now, now, Mr. Luck: hear us out. Please put the phone down. We don't need to bring security guards into this matter and make it weird. Mr. Rich Rodriguez is the rare coach who has significant and successful BCS-level head coaching experience, is under 50 years old, and is available immediately for employment. Why, he even has seven years of experience coaching your very own West Virginia Mountaineers! Seven! Had he not made the fatal error of trusting Greg Robinson, Mr. Rodriguez would undoubtedly still be coaching the Michigan Wolverines today. If he's good enough for Michigan, my goodness, he must be good enough for West Virginia again!

But that's silly because RichRod is terrible. I do have a serious suggestion, if West Virginia wants to start anew: 3E favorite Mike Leach. While incompetents like Lane Kiffin continue to fail upward, one of America's most interesting and innovative football coaches is wasting away in sunny south Florida. It seems to me like a match made in heaven: He obviously wants something to do, and if he was willing to work in Lubbock, he will gladly work in West Virginia. And while Leach is kind of controversial, and the West Virginia administration is probably trying to avoid controversy, I think that's a good thing. It gets the tone away from, hey our coaches hate each other and one got kicked out of some casinos, and and toward, that wacky Mike Leach did the weather report again! What a character. It's called controlling the narrative, West Virginia administration. Do it.

The ten happiest countries in the world

According to these guys, at least:

10. Austria
9. Israel
8. Finland
7. Switzerland
6. Sweden
5. The Netherlands
4. Australia
3. Norway
2. Canada
1. Denmark

Nobody in Sweden seemed that happy in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. What really strikes me about this list is that most of these countries are small and samey. Most of them are a bunch of the same kinds of people clumped together. Even Australia and Canada, while big, are made up of lots of open space, with people kind of clumped together. Also, it helps to be rich and white.

he IS above the law

"Drinky, the drunk guy." "Yeah, whose name is my dad."

Your hairdo is only limited by your imagination.

*an unlicensed salon

Tone Matrix

The Tone Matrix. I have seen Westley B. use it to make music so beautiful, so tragic, that I literally fell to my knees and wept. I think you will, too.

Idleness

All this is only preliminary. I want to say, in all seriousness, that a great deal of harm is being done in the modern world by belief in the virtuousness of work, and that the road to happiness and prosperity lies in an organized diminution of work.

[...]

Let us, for a moment, consider the ethics of work frankly, without superstition. Every human being, of necessity, consumes, in the course of his life, a certain amount of the produce of human labor. Assuming, as we may, that labor is on the whole disagreeable, it is unjust that a man should consume more than he produces. Of course he may provide services rather than commodities, like a medical man, for example; but he should provide something in return for his board and lodging. to this extent, the duty of work must be admitted, but to this extent only.

In Praise of Idleness, by Bertrand Russell | A Louis Wain cat