here are some WORSE picks

I don't know how I did last week and I don't care. Your god will be the only judge of me.

Central Michigan (+10.5) at KENTUCKY
MSU (-6.5) at Auburn
Cincinnati (+5) at TENNESSEE
Alabama (-10) at Penn State
South Carolina (-3) at Georgia
New Mexico (+36) at ARKANSAS
Uab (+23.5) at FLORIDA
UCONN (+1.5) at Vandy

Charles picking week 2

Last week I went 12-0 straight up and an unfortunate 5-7 against the spread. Once again for this week, bold to win, caps to cover the line.

Central Michigan (+10.5) at Kentucky
MSU (-6.5) at Auburn
Cincinnati (+5) at TENNESSEE
ALABAMA (-10) at Penn State
SOUTH CAROLINA (-3) at Georgia
New Mexico (+36) at ARKANSAS
Uab (+23.5) at FLORIDA
UConn (+1.5) at VANDY

No line on Southern Illinois at Ole Miss or Northwestern State at LSU.

almost certainly the handiwork of you-know-who

Tuesday chart-o-graphs

1. Ancestry

2. Wrestlers

3. Stool

carry on my wayward skank

Cooking with Norm

No one else in the world says segment an orange.

"Räumen."

"Steuerung klar?"
"Ist klar."
"Treibwerk klar?"
"Ist klar."
"Luftlage klar."
"Schlüssel auf SCHIESSEN."
"Schlüssel steht auf SCHIESSEN."
"Durchschalten."
"Luftlage klar."
"1st durchgeschaltet."
"Beluftung klar."
"Zundung klar."
"Vorstufe klar."

...

"Haupstufe."
"Haupstufe ist gegeben."

...

"Stecker 1 und 2 gefallen."

...

The Stotz plugs lie blasted on the ground, tossing in a splash of flame. On gravity feed, the flame is bright yellow. Then the turbine begins to roar. The flame suddenly turns blue. The sound of it grows to full cry.

The Rocket stays a moment longer on the steel table, then slowly, trembling, furiously muscular, it begins to rise.

You Can't Spell EPIC FAIL without EPL: This is what will happen!

Srsly, write this in your journals. This is what the table will look like come mid-may. Now that all the transfer deadline day craziness is over, I've been able to settle down and, in a fury of knowledge, crap out this almost completely shot-in-the-dark prediction. After the top six... it's as clusterfucky as clusterfucks get.

1. Manchester United
2. Manchester City
3. Chelsea
4. Liverpool
5. Arsenal
6. Tottenham Hotspur
7. Stoke City
8. Newcastle United
9. Sunderland
10. Aston Villa
11. Bolton Wanderers
12. Everton
13. Fulham
14. Queens Park Rangers
15. Wolverhampton Wanderers
16. Wigan Athletic
17. West Bromwich Albion
18. Blackburn Rovers
19. Norwich City
20. Swansea City

Tha Captain will be working tirelessly this weekend with comments about all of the teams. I mean, what else will I be doing during an off-weekend for the premier league?

HINT: I WILL BE WATCHING FOOTBALL HOLY GOD WELCOME BACK FOOTBALL

ok real pix

Miss. St. (-30) at Memphis
Kent State (+38) at ALABAMA
Missouri State (+42) at Arkansas
Utah State (+21) at AUBURN
Florida Atlantic (+35) at Florida
Boise St. (-3) vs. Georgia
Oregon (-3) vs. LSU
Brigham Young (-3) at Ole Miss
East Carolina (+20.5) vs. South Carolina
Montana (+28) at Tennessee
Elon (+12.5) at VANDERBILT
KENTUCKY (-18) vs. Western Kentucky

Home underdogs ALWAYS cover. WKU doesn't count because the game is in Nashville or something.

ThaCaptainzPix: Just something to hold you over until Ted's picks.

Following the pattern, bold's a winnah, cap's a coverah!

Miss. St. (-30) at Memphis
Kent State (+38) at Alabama
Missouri State (+42) at Arkansas
Utah State (+21) at Auburn
Florida Atlantic (+35) at Florida
Boise St. (-3) vs. Georgia
Oregon (-3) vs. Louisiana St.
Brigham Young (-3) at Ole Miss
East Carolina (+20.5) vs. South Carolina
Montana (+28) at Tennessee
Elon (+12.5) at Vanderbilt

Dogs be barkin. Got a good feeling about it.

3E Introduces the 2011 3E SEC Pick-Off: Charlie's picks

So this is a thing. I am doing it like this: bold to win, caps to cover the line.

MISSISSIPPI STATE (-30) at Memphis
Kent State (+38) at Alabama
Missouri State (+42) at ARKANSAS
Utah State (+21) at AUBURN
Florida Atlantic (+35) at Florida
BOISE STATE (-3) vs. Georgia
Oregon (-3) vs. LSU
BYU (-3) at Ole Miss
East Carolina (+20.5) vs. SOUTH CAROLINA
Montana (+28) at TENNESSEE
Elon (+12.5) at VANDY

UPDATE!: Forgot KENTUCKY (-18) vs. Western Kentucky

Disney was hardcore

they let little kids watch this?

in response to a comment tha captain made earlier

I thought this was your ringtone

It's a good life

Aunt Amy was out on the front porch, rocking back and forth in the highbacked chair and fanning herself, when Bill Soames rode his bicycle up the road and stopped in front of the house.

Perspiring under the afternoon "sun," Bill lifted the box of groceries out of the big basket over the front wheel of the bike, and came up the front walk.

Little Anthony was sitting on the lawn, playing with a rat. He had caught the rat down in the basement--he had made it think that it smelled cheese, the most rich-smelling and crumbly-delicious cheese a rat had ever thought it smelled, and it had come out of its hole, and now Anthony had hold of it with his mind and was making it do tricks.

When the rat saw Bill Soames coming, it tried to run, but Anthony thought at it, and it turned a flip-flop on the grass, and lay trembling, its eyes gleaming in small black terror.

Bill Soames hurried past Anthony and reached the front steps, mumbling. He always mumbled when he came to the Fremont house, or passed by it, or even thought of it. Everybody did. They thought about silly things, things that didn't mean very much, like two-and-two-is-four-and-twice-is-eight and so on; they tried to jumble up their thoughts to keep them skipping back and forth, so Anthony couldn't read their minds. The mumbling helped. Because if Anthony got anything strong out of your thoughts, he might take a notion to do something about it--like curing your wife's sick headaches or your kid's mumps, or getting your old milk cow back on schedule, or fixing the privy. And while Anthony mightn't actually mean any harm, he couldn't be expected to have much notion of what was the right thing to do in such cases.

That was if he liked you. He might try to help you, in his way. And that could be pretty horrible.

If he didn't like you ... well, that could be worse.

It's a Good Life

Metal Monday Means More Mastadon

I just really wish I hadn't watched this.

UPDATE: that screencap is so great, don't ruin it by watching.

I haven't watched this and I'm probably not going to.

glad it's out there, though.




also this:

..

3E approves

Vodka

Unemployment once again has crept past 9 percent. GDP growth fell below 2 percent this last quarter. Inflation is up. Home values are down. There’s talk of a double-dip recession. According to one market analyst, “We’re on the verge of a great, great depression.” But through it all, there is one constant, a commodity that has not only survived during these harsh economic times, but even thrived.

Vodka.

The next time you visit a bar, see if you can count on one hand the number of vodkas on the shelf. Chances are you’ll need both hands, and possibly feet. The bar at the original Pizzeria Uno in downtown Chicago contains 13 different vodkas: one bottle of Skyy, one bottle of Smirnoff, four flavors of Stolichnaya, five flavors of Absolut, one Ketel One, and one Grey Goose. At the T.G.I. Friday’s in Reagan National Airport outside Washington, two shelves are devoted to 14 varieties of vodka. Meanwhile, Boston’s übertrendy 28 Degrees restaurant boasts an astounding 22 bottles (13 brands, 15 flavors).

According to the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States, there are currently about a thousand different brands of vodka in existence. Keep in mind that the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau defines vodka as “neutral spirits [alcohol produced from any material at or above 190 degrees proof] so distilled, or so treated after distillation with charcoal or other materials, as to be without distinctive character, aroma, taste, or color.” Which means that a brand must often go to absurd lengths to distinguish itself from the rest of the pack. Consider Crystal Head Vodka, co-created by actor Dan Aykroyd, dispensed from a crystal skull and based on a mystical legend. Nostalgic for the Roaring Twenties? Pour yourself a glass of Tommy Guns Vodka, straight out of a bottle in the shape of a Thompson submachine gun. (Just ignore the fact that few Americans actually drank vodka in the 1920s.) Devotion Vodka contains a protein called casein, which contributes to a better “mouthfeel.” More important, it’s received the endorsement of Jersey Shore’s Mike “The Situation” Sorrentino. And of course, there’s the quintuple-distilled Trump Vodka: As its website proclaims, “Finally, a vodka worthy of the Trump name.”

Vodka Nation

Metal Monday

Thursday games

1. Kingdom Rush

2. Torus (a round Tetris it is awesome)

Miami football scandal

Oh man, if you haven't been following this Miami football thing, you should. It is vast and fascinating. It is bigger than all the allegations and proven violations by USC, Ohio State, UConn, Tennessee, Auburn, etc, put together. By one count:

• 66 current and former Miami football players.

• 25 former NFL draft picks, including 13 first-rounders. Among the most high-profile names: Devin Hester, Vince Wilfork, D.J. Williams, Jonathan Vilma, Willis McGahee, Andre Johnson, Frank Gore, Kellen Winslow Jr. and the late Sean Taylor.

• 16 players listed on the current Miami roster, including starting quarterback Jacory Harris and All-ACC linebacker Sean Spence.

• 7 players who now play for other schools, including Florida wide receiver Andre Debose and Kansas State running back Bryce Brown, a one-time Miami commit who was ranked as the No. 1 incoming prospect in the country in 2009.

• 7 former assistant coaches with alleged "knowledge or direct participation" in violating NCAA rules.

• 2 first-round picks, Jon Beason and Vince Wilfork, who signed to an agency Shapiro allegedly co-owned, Axcess Sports & Entertainment.

Players got paid bonuses for getting celebration penalties and hurting opposing players. Kellen Winslow crashed a boat into another boat, and it was paid for. A booster bought the suit Willis McGahee wore to the Heisman ceremony. One player knocked up a stripper, who got an abortion without his knowledge. Also, it was a Ponzi-scheming convicted felon behind it. I don't see how this doesn't get the death penalty, or something identical in all but name, for both the football and basketball teams.

French toast

It's a legitimate concern

So, I am doing job applications, and when I don't recognize a school I google it. Here is the (currently) first Google review for Wiley College:

If you is a nigga the hoes are not at this skool Wiley may have abt 10 bad bitches on a good day! But it u is a gay girl u will not be alone most of are skool is gay! And abt 3/4 of the niggas are gay at this skool too so witch yo bck!

Two stars.

"Whether the New World Order is using Al-Qaeda or the other way around I'm not sure."

Sarah Palin's identity is fabricated. Obama was positioned to win the election by a landslide. I think even McCain was picked as the opponent for Obama. If you want to get a guy elected, why not elect who he is going to run against? This is why "Sarah Palin" was strategically planted as McCain's running mate. By fabricating her history Al-Qaeda, or NWO, wouldn't know if she was on their team which would create chatter and flush out those who are part of Obama's "organized community." The feds continued with this online code by wrapping it around "Sarah Palin" to gather intelligence.

"Sarah Palin" claims to be a Maverick. John McCain claims to be a Maverick The person in the Rich Jerk videos online appears to be Dallas Maverick's Mark Cuban. Sarah coined the term "mama" grizzly. Under investigation for insider trading of company called Mamma was Mark Cuban. The first forum to attack and hack me online was a forum called Friends In Business Scams 101 with the owner named Mama. Cuban is also known for financing a movie through Magnolia Pictures named "Redacted." This is anti war movie that many thought was treasonous. I imagine the release of Sarah Palin's emails, many of which were "red"acted, was timed with the Mavericks's playoff games.

[...]

Sarah's entire background is fabricated. I'm not sure how they did it, but Alaska is about half the size of the continental United States. It's also one of least densely populated, most remote areas in the US, like Hawaii in some ways. It wouldn't be difficult to build a background for her, and swap her name in anywhere the real Alaska Governor's name existed. The feds had several months to pull this off. When Sarah was announced as McCain's running mate the voice they used was similar to the voice used in video of a seminar to announce Dan Kennedy, another online expert claiming to be a copywriter.

[...]

Last, through endless interrogations it's been implied that the person who wrote the sales pitch at the Rich Jerk website is Tina Fey. Sarah Palin's "mother in law" is named "Faye" Palin. I believe that Tina Fey didn't play the look alike for Sarah Palin, but Sarah Palin was chosen as McCain's running mate, whoever she is, because she's the look alike for Tina Fey. This isn't the only reason though, she was also picked to play the average American hockey mom who could pass for a Miss Alaska pageant contestant. It looks like the only thing "Sarah" is being used for is to discredit the media. A media that is being heavily controlled now by the feds.

The feds think people are too ignorant to connect the dots and too lazy to do anything about it. Keep in mind that even they were shown this. A military Coup, or coup d'etat began with Sarah Palin in 2008. The feds acted upon all my information and much of Sarah Palin's identity is fabricated around my family and history to generate chatter from this group.

The 2012 Elections

Warning: Nobody beats Gene

Self reliance

I read the other day some verses written by an eminent painter which were original and not conventional. The soul always hears an admonition in such lines, let the subject be what it may. The sentiment they instil is of more value than any thought they may contain. To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men, — that is genius. Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the universal sense; for the inmost in due time becomes the outmost,—— and our first thought is rendered back to us by the trumpets of the Last Judgment. Familiar as the voice of the mind is to each, the highest merit we ascribe to Moses, Plato, and Milton is, that they set at naught books and traditions, and spoke not what men but what they thought. A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is his. In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty. Great works of art have no more affecting lesson for us than this. They teach us to abide by our spontaneous impression with good-humored inflexibility then most when the whole cry of voices is on the other side. Else, to-morrow a stranger will say with masterly good sense precisely what we have thought and felt all the time, and we shall be forced to take with shame our own opinion from another.

There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried. Not for nothing one face, one character, one fact, makes much impression on him, and another none. This sculpture in the memory is not without preestablished harmony. The eye was placed where one ray should fall, that it might testify of that particular ray. We but half express ourselves, and are ashamed of that divine idea which each of us represents. It may be safely trusted as proportionate and of good issues, so it be faithfully imparted, but God will not have his work made manifest by cowards. A man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his work and done his best; but what he has said or done otherwise, shall give him no peace. It is a deliverance which does not deliver. In the attempt his genius deserts him; no muse befriends; no invention, no hope.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance

had a pretty good trip

the car in front of me at Winn Dixie

Now I may be just be a simple country Hyper-Chicken, but I think that says "Tee Tee," as in, the thing little kids call urination.

The city's ablaze, the town's on fire

tha captain announces his new book

apparently the Hotspur are made about something

guess where i'm going!

Hint: not a phish concert!

That's right! UT football game!

Computer chess

"Even among the skeptics who insisted it was a trick, there was disagreement about how the automaton worked, leading to a series of claims and counterclaims," writes author Tom Standage. "Did it rely on mechanical trickery, magnetism, or sleight of hand? Was there a dwarf, or a small child, or a legless man hidden inside it?"

Well, all of the above—or below, actually. In the rear bottom interior of the box sat a flesh-and-blood operative (by necessity a small one) who followed the human contender's moves from below and maneuvered The Turk's right hand across the table board. Nonetheless, the machine became "the most famous automaton in history," Standage notes, commented on by Charles Babbage, Edgar Allan Poe, Benjamin Franklin, and Napoleon Bonaparte.

More importantly, The Turk whetted the West's appetite for real devices that could do such things. Over two centuries later, this project culminated in Deep Blue—the IBM computer that bested Russian chess champion Gary Kasparov in 1997.

But what's most fascinating about "Mastering the Game," the Computer History Museum's computer chess exhibit, is that it frames the rise of the automated chess playing as a debate between two philosophies of computing. One emphasized the "brute force" approach, taking advantage of algorithmic power offered by ever more powerful processors available to programmers after the Second World War. The other has foregrounded the importance of teaching chess computers to select strategies and even to learn from experience—in other words, to play more like humans.

Brute Force or Intelligence? The Slow Rise of Computer Chess

Friday links

1. Museum of Hoaxes

2. Agnes the aging suit

3. Paula Deen and Craig Ferguson:

I have no idea how pointless I am, and I don't even know I'm gonna die

This makes me laugh.

That's some funky lemonade you got going there babe

CFB Dictator: the Postseason

If I were given dictatorial power to make changes in the college football landscape -- like the ancient Romans, perhaps some great crisis comes along and they concentrate all power in one man -- here is what I would do with regards to college football's postseason:

There shouldn't be a BCS, and the bowls should go back to their old tie-ins, with the major bowls played on or very close to New Year's Day. With the exception of conference champions, I would forbid bowl games from hosting teams from the same two conferences two years in a row. The following bowl games would represent conference tie-ins:

The Rose Bowl: PAC-12 vs B1G 10
The Sugar Bowl: SEC vs at-large
Orange Bowl: ACC vs at-large
Fiesta Bowl: Big East vs at-large
Cotton Bowl: The Big 12 (or whatever replaces it) vs at-large

If a minor conference team or independent goes undefeated and is ranked higher than any major conference champion, then one of the bowls must take that team. If none of the bowls with open spots are willing to do so, then the decision is made by lot.

ON PLAY-OFFS/THE NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP:

The push for a play-off in college football is motivated in large part by the idea that there is an inherent value in crowning a national champion. As professional baseball has the World Series, as pro football has the Super Bowl, etc etc, people think that college football must, like any other competitive sporting event, pick one team at the end of the competitive schedule and claim that team as the best team in the country.

I do not agree with this. There's no inherent value in picking a national champion, whatever the method you use. It's only important so far as the methods used to pick that champion are themselves worthwhile. Let's use the ACC football title as an example. The inherent value of being the champion of the ACC has not changed since the creation of a conference championship game following the ACC's expansion. But the mediocre games, lame match-ups, and half-empty stadiums have the ACC look bad. I think the 2008 game is the best example, a snoozer between BC and Virginia played in front of 27,000 paying customers.

Having a championship, of any kind, is only worthwhile if there is some other value in it. I don't think there's sufficient value in a college football championship game or declaration of "national champion," at least not more value than we currently have in the bowl system/regional loyalties that college football currently boasts.* No matter how fun a ten-team playoff might be, there's too much that would be lost from the current system in pursuit of a goal that's just not, when you get right down to it, that important.

That said,

IF YOU ABSOLUTELY HAVE TO HAVE A NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP:

The bowls play in the first day or two of the new year. The next week, take the conference champions who won their bowl games and seed them 1-4 as based on whatever rankings you want to use (we can keep the BCS, or use the polls, but I would favor strength of schedule). In the unlikely event that all five bowl games see conference champions win their games, then use whatever ranking system you're using to pick the four candidates.

Take the other winners of the bowl games and rank them 2-4 as needed. These four teams are your playoff.

The first round would be played the first Saturday that is five or more days after the bowls are finished, and each game will be played at the home stadium of the higher ranked team. The championship game would be played the following week at a rotating location that, to avoid home fieldish advantage or a let-down-type ticket situation, cannot be the same as any of the locations use for a bowl game, conference championship game, or neutral site game that season.

So, using 2010 as an example, the major bowl match-ups might have been as follows:

The Rose Bowl: Oregon vs Ohio State
The Sugar Bowl: Auburn vs Wisconsin
Orange Bowl: Virginia Tech vs Arkansas
Fiesta Bowl: UConn vs Stanford
Cotton Bowl: Oklahoma vs TCU

Note that in this case because TCU is a conference champion, if they win, they get to the first round of conference teams eligible for the play-offs. Let's say Oregon, Auburn, Arkansas, Stanford, and TCU won. First seeding the conference champions who won their bowls, we get Auburn, Oregon, TCU seeded 1-3. Second, we need one more team, so we take Stanford, as the hypothetically highest ranked winning team besides the conference champs. The playoff would see Auburn hosting Stanford and Oregon hosting TCU. The winner of those games would meet at a neutral site for the national championship.

*This is the same reason that SEC expansion into Oklahoma or West Virginia or Virginia is a bad idea. If you were building a new conference right now, you wouldn't have two teams in Mississippi or Alabama or Tennessee, but that geographic continuity results in a social and cultural similarity that strengthens the conference and thus its football product. The SEC is more than the sum of its parts, and expansion scenarios should keep that in mind.

1) they're obviously recruiting groupies

2) literally everything they say is innuendo
3) kids, ask your parents' permission!



4)

super mario rap

Remember SongSpy? That's where I got this song.

that's a pretty clever album title, I admit

Hey there's a Nirvana tribute cover album (!) out. I only like two of them to which I've listened:

CFB Dictator: Conference Realignment

If I were given dictatorial power to make changes in the college football landscape -- like the ancient Romans, perhaps some great crisis comes along and they concentrate all power in one man -- here is what I would do with regards to conference realignment:

I have two plans. In both, the SEC, B1G 10, and PAC-12 stay as they are. Everyone else is primarily determined by geographic reasons and football, the big money-maker, especially since everyone knows the regular season doesn't really matter in basketball. I am inclined toward the second plan, but I think the first one is acceptable, too.

FEELING GENEROUS:

MAC: Iowa State joins, making the MAC an even fourteen teams.

Mountain West: Includes currentish members Colorado State, Boise State, Air Force, San Diego State, Wyoming, New Mexico, and BYU, plus former Big XII members Kansas and Kansas State, plus former WAC members Hawaii, Fresno State, and Nevada. UNLV and the remaining teams left in the WAC (save Louisiana Tech, see below) are kicked out of 1-A.

TOK Conference: Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Tulsa, UTEP, Texas Tech, Texas, Baylor, Texas A&M, Houston, SMU, TCU, and North Texas are grouped into one conference. Rice is kicked out of 1-A. The Oklahoma teams, Texas Tech, SMU, and North Texas are in one division, the rest in the other.

C-USA: After losing its TOK teams, C-USA picks up former Big XII member Missouri, former WAC member Louisiana Tech, and former Sun Belt members Troy, Florida International, Florida Atlantic, and Middle Tennessee State. East Carolina leaves for the ACC. The remaining Sun Belt schools are kicked out of 1-A. Louisville replaces Marshall in C-USA.

Big East: The Big East picks up Army, Navy, East Carolina, and Notre Dame. Marshall replaces Louisville. Boston College replaces South Florida.

ACC: South Florida replaces Boston College.

Now there are regional major conferences (The SEC, ACC, B1G 10, Pac-12, and kind of the TOK and Big East) and minor regional conferences (CUSA, MAC, and the MWC) embracing a total of 110 schools. I kept some schools that probably don't deserve it for the sake of staging championship games for every conference.

FEELING NOT SO GENEROUS:

The Pac-12, SEC, and B1G 10 stay as they are in actuality. The ACC and Big East remain as I have them above, except the Big East keeps Louisville instead of getting Marshall. Then we have a new conference:

South-West Conference: Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Texas Tech, Texas, Missouri, Texas A&M, TCU, Kansas, Kansas State, and Houston. They are required to play a round-robin schedule, and this conference mostly exists to give Texas and Oklahoma something to do.

Independents: Hawaii, BYU, Fresno State, Boise State, Air Force, Marshall, Toledo, Troy, Bowling Green, Nevada, Miami of Ohio, and Central Florida. These schools are allowed to keep their football programs at the 1-A level, if they want. They play as football and, if they can afford it, basketball independents. The other non-revenue sports can join conferences at the 1-AA or below level.

In this version, we have five major twelve-team conferences (SEC, B1G 10, PAC-12, ACC, Big East), one major ten-team conference (SWC), and basically another conference of independents with winning records in recent years to round out the schedules. These 82 teams make up 1-A.

i'm a whore, hello

Get More: Beavis and Butt-Head, MTV Shows

the new Beastie Boys video is amazing

Temporal Anomalies movies

Even though I disagree with him on the nature of time travel (if time travel to the past is a thing, then causality should really be treated as a falsity or perhaps a misunderstanding of the nature of reality stemming from our limited human perspective), I like this guy's analyses of the temporal anomalies created in movies about time travel. Sample:

In this original history, Sarah Connor must have had a child. It was not Kyle Reese's child; it might not even have been a boy. All that is certain is that a child was born. It is also certain that someone created something called Skynet, a computer system able to control all of our computerized weapons systems, and that at some point this system became self-aware, and turned against humanity. An unfathomable number of humans died, but Sarah Connor's child survived, and led a resistance of some sort which fought back and prevented Skynet's victory. At some point, however, Skynet decided that it had one good option, to send a machine to the past to destroy Sarah Connor's child. For whatever reason, it determined to do this by destroying Sarah Connor before the child was born. Thus a Terminator was sent back, and history changed completely.

When I say that in this timeline Kyle Reese did not come from the future to protect Sarah Connor, the immediate thought will be that Sarah will die. However, in response to that it is probable that the original terminator was not the T-800 of the first movie, but a much less developed model. The reasons for that are explained in the previous page. Somehow, Sarah Connor managed to escape and give birth to her child. A terminator is relentless, though, and eventually it would have caught up with Sarah Connor and killed her. This must have happened after the child was born. Otherwise, there would have been no child, and Skynet would have had no reason to send the T-800 back, and we would fall into an infinity loop. Because Sarah was killed by the Terminator, Sarah's child would have sent Kyle Reese back to protect her; there is no good reason to have sent someone back to protect Sarah Connor if Sarah Connor survived (something already known from that moment in the future which immediately follows the departure of the Terminator), so Sarah must have been killed. This arrival of Kyle Reese in the past is the second time history changes completely, the third version of time.

this is the best thing

police raid tha captain's home

soundtrack for the weekend

Feldman suspension

The real lesson of this whole Bruce Feldman brouhaha isn't that ESPN is stupid, or that Craig James is an obnoxious, hypocritical idiot and a bad announcer (we already knew both of these things). What the story really does, in conjunction with the Longhorn Network and its inherent violation of journalistic ethics, is to underscore the need for competition in the world of sports journalism. ESPN can act the way that they do because they don't have any meaningful competition. There's other options in any particular medium, of course -- SI has a website and a magazine, and there are other blogs, and there are other networks that show sporting events. But nobody has the kind of influence across the board that ESPN does.

I wish that one (or more!) of ESPN's competitors would step up with a serious combined challenge. Sports Illustrated is part of Time Warner, who owns CNN; they could start a cable news network, right? CBS, Fox, and NBC all have terrible sports channels right now, but there's no reason that any of them couldn't, you know, put some quality sports content on the air. What's the point of having massive consolidation of media power into a few multinational conglomerates if they can't give us good content?

I've only got 10/20

yes yes yes yes
yes yes want want
meh yes no haveadifferentalbumoftheirs
no yes yes yes
no no no no

disclaimer in the upper right of click-embiggened version.

froggies

illusion

this kind of freaked me out:

this just in

sundays at midnight, apparently

the rest of my family is so much more interesting than i am.

logic game

Impasse, I am not quite halfway through. Fun!

an ad campaign that I liked...

or would have, had i ever heard of it.



then there's this. sloooowed down.



which inevitably led to this.

same chair. different BACs.

sober pic courtesy of tred.

Durrrty South Sudan

Well, we all have a new capital to memorize. There's the flag. It's the usual African nonsense. Still better than Kosovo, though.

UPDATE: the flag isn't there. go find it!

Cheatypants

Where will Jim Tressel end up coaching next? It's inevitable that he gets back into the job, so the real question is where. I don't think his coaching style and "Fatherly Baptist Deacon caught stealing from the collection plates and plowing the choir director" shtick will fly in the NFL, so that means another college job. My guess is that by 2013 he ends up at some second-tier school with an urge to win and a creative relationship with the rulebook. Possible destinations might include Oregon State, Arizona State, Texas A&M, Arkansas, or UCLA.

However, Tressel is a man of the Midwest. Would a Big 10 team take a chance by hiring him? I bet some of the loser programs would, after a year or three. Tressel will end up at Minnesota or Illinois: mark it, dude.

an ad campaign I liked

Wendy's "Good to Be Square," mostly because of this charming commercial.

HOLY SHIT I KNOW THAT GUY

ONE OF THA CAPTAINZ CLOZEZT FRIENDZ! GODSPEED!

like a lizard on a windowpane

lighters

I saw at the sporting goods store that apparently there is a big demand for BBQ lighters shaped like weapons, tools, or sporting equipment.


You can see there that options at this particular establishment include fishing poles, shotguns, M-16s, and bolt-action rifles. The existence of options isn't a surprise, but the number and the variety make me wonder who is buying all these BBQ lighters. Are there folks with a whole collection of different shapes, each for a different mood, food, or holiday?

west: a counter-proposal

imagine BSC coming out to these killer back beats:



Also too, Metallica generally sucks. Not entirely, but mostly.

charles, listen to it, i know it's not happy puss-rock...

it's just old, whatever, metallica, but imagine the mighty BSC football team taking the field to this... with 'battery' replaced with 'b - s - c.' So sweet.



CAN NOT STOP THE B S C!

B S C!

Laying tackless stripping, and housewives by the score

I substitute lectured earlier this week

It didn't go this well

Apparently today is Canada Day

and this is a big if...

If and when I have enough money to buy a piece of wood...

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