Profoundity

This last Sunday, season 2 of "Eastbound and Down" came to a close. And although I felt this season was no where near the level of awesome that was the first, it still had its funny moments. The episode on Sunday closed with a quote that I found rather profound and since I so rarely find things to be profound I figured I would share it with you here:

"Just like that the journey is over. Depression is finished and you're on your way back to the world of the living, smiling, regular people. The road has been paved with dickheads, back-stabbers, and pains in the fucking ass. But memories are made, allies were had, pole smokers were toppled and the truth was discovered. And like any journey, if you stay the course long enough, the road might just show you what you need. All you got to do is keep your eyes on the road and your foot on the fucking gas." -Kenny Powers

So there you have it. And since this will inevitably be the only post I put on this blog this month, I hope you will savor it and enjoy the profoundity of it!

Drew Brees owes me 825 dollars.

Ok we haven't had a sports blog in a good long while and since this weekend was probably the worst sports weekend ever for me personally, I figured it was time for one.

Let's start with the Texas Rangers. After winning the first two games of the ALDS in Tampa Bay, the Rangers somehow didn't get the memo that you actually have to win the 3rd in order to advance. So now the series is all tied up at 2 games each after Tampa came into Arlington this weekend and quite frankly put a beat down on the Rangers. I still think that they will advance to the ALCS to play the Yankees, but they need to get their shit together ASAP. Luckily, I think they will have Cliff Lee starting for them in game 5 which should give them the advantage. At least the Phillies already clinched since I am quasi rooting for them in the National League.

Moving right along to the Houston Texans. I have neglected to write about them this season because I wasn't really sure how the team was going perform this year and I didn't want to jinx them. After starting out 2-0 by beating the Colts at home and the Redskins on the road in their first ever overtime victory, there was some considerable hype that this might be “the year". I'm talking, of course, about making the playoffs. (Playoffs?). ESPN had the Texans ranked number 3 in their power rankings after week 2. Well I must admit that after watching yesterday's game against the Giants, I would be surprised if they managed to finish 8-8 this season. In fact, that is my most optimistic scenario since the Texans are your classic "Myspace Angle" team at 3-2. In all likelihood, they will finish at 7-9 or 6-10 just like we always expect them to. Until they can figure out how to show up week in and week out, I just don't see the team doing anything of value. Beating the Colts at home in the season opener doesn't mean jack if you aren't able to finish out the rest of the season.

And now for the triple whammy, the New Orleans Saints. I decided to play in a Survivor/Knock-Out style fantasy game this year. The idea is that you pay 15 bucks at the beginning of the season and then pick an NFL team to win each week. No point spread or anything, just win. If your team loses, you are out and if they win you continue on. Last man standing gets all the money. The only catch is that once you pick a team, you can no longer use them the rest of the season. I had planned out a perfect road map for the season and figured that the Super Bowl Champion New Orleans Saints would be able to beat the miserable Arizona Cardinals who were starting an undrafted rookie quarterback. Boy was I wrong. Drew Brees took it upon himself to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory by throwing 2 interceptions in the 4th quarter, both of which led to touchdowns for the Cardinals. It is in that respect that I figure Drew Brees owes me 825 dollars. The game was a lock for crying out loud!

Ah, felt good to get that all out of my system. I thought it was an omen that this Sunday was 10/10/10. I figured that all 3 teams I was rooting for would get "10's" for their performance. So much for superstition. By the way, there is a slight chance that I will be going to the Texans/Chiefs game this Sunday. Should that opportunity present itself, you can bet your ass that I will be wearing a bag over my head. Look for me on tv!

*EDIT*
I forgot that I was supposed to give Christine a shout out. So here it is, go check out her blog here!

The Sharktopus

This past week, I noticed that the word "Sharktopus” was a trending topic on Twitter. Intrigued, I looked up what all the fuss was about. You see, since I no longer have cable, I am occasionally behind the ball on new TV shows and made for TV movies. Sharktopus was one of those movies airing on the Sci Fi channel. After reading some of the reviews on the internet and watching the promo commercial, I decided that I had to see this thing.

So last night, I watched the Sharktopus movie. I'm using the word "movie” lightly here since there was really only about 30 minutes of actual plot related material. The other 60 or so minutes were the indiscriminate killings of the Sharktopus on the some sort of vacation resort in Mexico. Now, you may be asking yourself, what is the Sharktopus? Let me break it down for you one time. The Sharktopus is half man, half shark and half octopus. It was created by the DOD, apparently, to be a super stealthy killing machine or something. It was controlled by a control collar that conveniently gets destroyed in the opening scenes of the film, thus setting up the story.

You obviously cannot go into this movie expecting anything but entertainment value. I found myself laughing at the simple absurdity of most of the kill scenes. The Sharktopus can impale people with its tentacles, jump into the air to catch a bungee jumper and walk on fucking land. I bet you thought the Sharktopus would be confined to its watery home, but you'd be wrong. The Sharktopus can climb mountains to kill people in a cliff top restaurant. Also, the Sharktopus doesn't even consume his victims; he just kills them for what I can only assume is the pure joy of it.

I'm not going to go into any more of the plot details because I honestly believe you should watch this movie. It has everything a Sci Fi movie of the week should have: overzealous reporter, power drunk Shartopus creator, down to earth Shartopus creator's daughter, former Navy Seal hero, annoying radio DJ guy and girls in skimpy outfits. I applaud the Sci Fi channel for knowing no bounds when coming up with these films.

What's next, Sci Fi channel? Got any more ideas for the next half something half something killing machine? How about a half crocodile half hippopotamus: The Croctopotomus! It can even have the same plot and story! Think about it: "The Navy, wanting to have a bigger yet also stealthier presence in the Sub-Saharan jungle, creates a new breed of monster, The Crotopotomus. But, due to a malfunction, the Crotopotomus is released in downtown New York where it dwells in the run down subway lines waiting for its next victim.” And then at the end you could have it climbing the Empire State building or something for no adequately explored reason. And when the monster is finally killed at the end by the Army or another Croctopotomus or something, the creator will weep and shout to the heavens: "Who's the real 7 billion dollar monster now? Not I…..not…I.” Credits roll.

All rights reserved. Just be sure to send me my movie check when it gets made.

Las Vegas Road Trip

This post is a long time coming. I apologize in advance if it is TLDR. It has already been a month since I took the road trip and it was about damn time that I blogged about it. A little bit of history first, the idea to go on a road trip to Vegas originated from watching a day long marathon of History Channel's Pawn Stars. It was during this marathon that my brother jokingly reminded me that I had yet to sell the Country Legends autographed guitar that I had purchased at a charity auction earlier the previous year. I jokingly responded by saying that I should drive to Las Vegas and attempt to get on the Pawn Stars show and sell my guitar there. For some reason, we both got really serious about the idea and just sort of ran with it since 1) my brother has never been to vegas and 2) I really wanted to go to vegas again.

So we set out. I drove from Houston to San Antonio to pick my brother up from his school on a Friday after work. The next morning we woke up around 6:00am and proceeded to drive to Albuquerque, NM, some 800 miles away. That first day was rather uneventful. Getting stopped at the border control stations along the way always makes me nervous for some reason. I mean, I am a legal citizen who is also not a drug mule but nevertheless I always think in the back of my head that I am one of those drug mules who doesn't even know it and I would end up going to prison like in that awful Claire Danes movie Brokedown Palace. I was also pleasantly surprised at how nice of a city Las Cruces was. I guess I really never had a reason to think it would be a dump other than the fact that it is in the middle of the freaking desert and I just figured it would have more of a The Hills Have Eyes kind of vibe. I couldn't have been more wrong; Las Cruces had a Jack in the Box and Super Target and everything else you would expect to find in a civilization. Albuquerque was nice too.

Ok so the next morning we got up early again and hit the road bound for the Grand Canyon. This segment of the journey really struck me at just how empty the parts of northern New Mexico and Arizona really are. At best we would see a truck stop every 80 or so miles but pretty much everything else was just flat plains with the occasional mountain range. Oh, and the 4 for $20 Indian t-shirt deals that were advertised every 4 miles or so. That day's trip was relatively short compared to the epic 13 hour drive the day before. We arrived in Williams, AZ around 1:00 local time and attempted to check into our hotel. The story about this hotel is so long and ridiculous that I will spare you it right now for another blog post. Anyway, check in time was 3:00 so we decided just to grab some food real fast and do all of the Grand Canyon stuff that day before checking in to the hotel later at night. The Grand Canyon was awesome as usual.

I was pretty surprised at the amount of foreign visitors that were there. I would say that maybe 30-40% of the folks there were French and maybe another 20% of the people were from Asian countries. I didn't remember it being so culturally diverse the last time I was there.

Quick tangent: On the way to the Grand Canyon, my brother and I got the opportunity to go to Meteor Crater. Set aghast by the $15 dollar admission fee, I began plotting my revenge. While exploring the crater, I picked up a small rock on the outer rim and put it in my pocket. I sure showed those guys! Now fast forward to being at the Grand Canyon. I decided that it would be in mine and all future generation's best interest if I hurled the rock from Meteor Crater into the Grand Canyon. And I did exactly that. Think about it, in 8 brazillion years (that's 4.7 years in metric), alien archaeologists are going to be poking around in the Grand Canyon, find my rock and say "By golly, Grog, this rock shouldn't be here, this throws my whole view of ancient Earth in a New Light I tell ya". Grog is the name of an alien, in case you couldn't pick that up through context clues. Also, the aliens are from the southern region of whatever alien world they come from.

Moving along, the next day was the day we would be driving into Las Vegas! Having driven this route before, I remembered that we would be passing over Hoover Dam. This was an unexpected bonus from my brother who had never been there before. The water beneath the dam looked even lower than the last time I was there when it was already pretty damn low. According to Wikipedia, the entire basin is expected to be dried up in the next 20 years. Scary thought for folks like me who like Las Vegas having electricity and running water. But that is a problem for future people to figure out…it was time to do some gambling! We stayed at Bally's since I had complimentary nights there. I like staying at Bally's because it is right in the middle of the strip and you don't have to walk too far in either direction to get where you want to go. So we did some gambling and my brother won quite a bit of money right off the bat with his bullshit beginner's luck while I had a pretty heavy dose of veteran gambler's luck. I managed to win a poker tournament at Mandalay Bay the second day we were there, the very same Mandalay Bay which began a series of unfortunate events that led to me being kicked out of the Luxor Hotel and Casino last time I was in town.

So we stayed in Las Vegas for 2 nights. There was a plan to stay for 3 but we were both pretty vacationed out by this point. I laid some money on my Super Bowl picks and we headed out to the Gold and Silver Pawn Shop that was the main reason for this whole trip anyway.

The pawn shop is a lot smaller than it looks on TV. None of the people you see on the show were working the day we went there. This was a disappointment to my brother who really wanted to meet Chumlee. They had some of the stuff from the TV show in the show room and a merchandise area that I have never seen on the show. My brother and I both picked up a Chumlee t-shirt and we went back to the car to bring the guitar inside and do some dealing. After standing in line behind a guy who was pawning his Xbox 360 for what I could only assume was drug money, we stepped up to and placed the guitar on the counter. The counter where we were at was the place where you usually see them paying people on the show for the items that have been brought in. It was really cool seeing the desk behind the counter where the old man sits. Long story short, the guy pretty much offered me the same amount of money for the guitar that I had bought it for. "I can't even get near the 2k you are looking for", he said. Discouraged, I took my guitar with me back home where it will no doubt lay in anguish for a while until it appreciates a little more in value. Fail.

So we left Las Vegas, headed back over the Hoover Dam and proceeded to drive to Tucson, AZ. The original plan was to stay in Tucson for a night, explore some of the things around there the next day and then drive back to Las Cruces for one final night. It turns out that we were so sick of driving that we decided to forgo the final night of our trip and just drive straight back to San Antonio from Tucson. This was hardly the scenic route that we took on the first half of our trip. Driving through the empty desert is certainly not as nice as driving through forested mountain ranges and plains. Luckily with these new fangled phones and cars, we were able to listen to hours and hours of uninterrupted music which definitely cut down on the mundanity (not sure if that is a word…) of driving 867 miles. We made it back into San Antonio around 8pm, only 13.5 hours after we departed Tucson. 80mph speed limit zones really help out on long stretches of road like that.

All in all it was a fantastic trip. Getting back out to the Grand Canyon and finally getting to see Meteor Crater were definitely highlights of the trip. My brother had a great time in Vegas. Don't get me wrong, I had a good time in Vegas as well, I just would have had a better time if I had got the $2000 I was hoping for at the pawn shop. At just over 3300 miles, it was a little bit less than driving from coast to coast. As much fun as it was retelling this story, you must absolutely stay tuned for my post about the adventure we experienced at the hotel in Williams, Arizona. It was nothing short of a debacle.

Ok, I am just under 3 full pages in Microsoft Word right now, better stop typing. This is by far my longest post on this blog yet and should make up for the utter lack of updates recently. If you actually read through this whole post then I applaud you for being able to fight through my incoherent rambling. Be sure to leave a note in the comments on if this post even made sense. Hopefully I will be able to get back to updating this thing with some kind of regularity.

And now for some keyword selection...

Writers Block

It's official, I have the dreaded writers block. Not that I ever had anything of particular interest to write about before, mind you. With that in mind, let's do a little bit of brainstorming for future blog posts, shall we?

The mathematics of quantum neutrino fields.

The mathematics of wonton burrito meals.

How good or bad an endangered animal might taste.

Hurling various items into the sun and their order of said hurling.

Cartography: A Love Story.

Real life Gold Farming.

A discussion about the various items on my desk.

Possibility of consuming 10 McDouble cheeseburgers in 10 minutes.

Mosquitoes: An Apocalypse.

Electricity: Is it magic?

The freakin Energizer Bunny: A tale of Horror.

Writers block: A smorgasbord of bad brainstorming.

See? See what I mean? These ideas are all terrible. I mean MAYBE the one about mosquitoes, but seriously!

Anyway, I’m on Foursquare now. Go there and stalk me, you stalkers.

Pawn Super Star

Lately I've been watching a lot of the show "Pawn Stars" on the History channel. In case you aren't familiar with the show, it basically chronicles the day to day operations of a pawn shop in Las Vegas. And in case you really don't know, pawn shops are places where people bring in stuff to either sell outright or take a loan out against that stuff in order to buy drugs and/or pay off their loan shark. The show is interesting in the fact that people bring in some really weird and unique items that are sometimes worth a lot of money.

Now, why is this relevant to anything? Well, if you recall, I purchased a Country Legends autographed guitar about one and a half years ago. This guitar was autographed by country legends such as George Strait, BB King, Kenny Rogers, Charlie Daniels, Willie Nelson and Loretta Lynn. The idea at the time was to flip the guitar and make insane amounts of money. In fact, that is still the idea, one of my best.

You see, I plan on taking this guitar to that very pawn shop on the History channel. The reasons for this are three fold. 1.) Taking a trip to Vegas. 2.) Selling this guitar for lots of money. 3.) Did I mention Vegas? Not too mention the fun I am going to have haggling with the guy and potentially being on tv. I’m thinking about walking into the place with my newly purchased Captain's Hat that I got in Port Aransas over the weekend so they know I mean business when I walk through the door.

The current plan is to drive out to Vegas with my brother who has never been there before as an adult. I will then sell the guitar for a large amount of money and then I will make it rain in the club. Well, at least in the hotel room.

As to the decrepit state of this blog, yes, I have been neglecting it pretty bad recently. Hopefully that will all change on this road trip where I plan on blogging through out the entirety of the drive out there and back. If I am not too lazy, maybe I will upload a few pictures of the voyage as well. I am taking a much needed whole week off work to accomplish this. So stay tuned for more updates!

Christine and I again both recently passed the $100 mark in Google monies and are currently planning the party where it will all be wasted, ie: more riot punch! You can check out her blog here to keep the monies flowing into our accounts. You do want the monies flowing, right? Of course you do.

Painting and Alcohol

*stock photo, mine was a billion times better*

So this past weekend, I went with a couple friends to this thing called "Painting with a Twist”. The idea is that you show up, and these people will walk you through the step by step process of creating a masterpiece on canvas. Oh and there is also booze involved, hence the “twist” in the title. Now if you know me at all, you know I have the artistic skills of a rabid badger that has been drinking too much. However, it turns out that I am able to follow directions pretty well and needless to say my painting turned out to be one hell of a masterpiece. I’m talking Renaissance level art here.

Going into it, I figured that my painting would be, at best, abysmal. But they actually did a pretty good job of showing us how to blend the colors and create tree branches to hide any and all of the screw ups. The whole thing took about 2 hours from start to finish. And while the painting we chose to do was really effeminate (the girls chose this one), I still had a good time painting it while listening to Heather (shout out*) talking about how shitty her’s was turning out. Also, blending colors is a real bitch.

Christine (shout out*) and I each killed a bottle of smooth, delicious champagne that morning. Needless to say I was impressed with my ability to draw well while under the influence of alcohol and orange juice. All of our paintings turned out pretty well in the end. I found that the best strategy to not messing up your art was to just stop painting. The more I tried to fix problems, the more terrible it got. It’s like I always say, sometimes you just gotta put the paintbrush down and take another sip of your mimosa, you know what I mean?

So who knows, maybe I am in the wrong profession. Perhaps it was my destiny to paint the walls of the Sixteen Chapels in the Vatican or something. I would most definitely go do this again although I wouldn’t mind doing a more gender independent work. I always see people buying lame, non-masterpiece art for ridiculous prices at like Bed Bath and Beyond so I figure I could make quite a bit of monies selling my work on the side. Or, better yet, I’ll just start up my own art teaching class. With blackjack…and hookers! In fact, forget the art class...

*Shout outs were demanded by the viewing audience.

Link: Painting with a Twist

Understanding the World Cup

It is no secret that I am not a big soccer fan. In fact, it might be safe to say that I am more disinterested in soccer than anyone else on the planet. I have a lot of reasons for this and I will get into them a little later in this post. Before I do that though, I want to make it perfectly clear that I tried to like it. With the World Cup starting up last week, I decided that I was going to give the sport an honest effort to understand why it is the world’s "Most Popular Sport".

First things first, a little background. I have never been able to participate in or watch soccer in any form. I am also very unaware of the rules and traditions that soccer adheres to save for the kicking the ball into the net without using your hands aspect. So I did a little bit of basic Wikipedia research on the sport before watching the opening game of the World Cup. After getting mildly educated on the sport, I felt good about the rules and the yellow cards and red cards etc. To say the least, I was pumped about the prospect of finally understanding why everyone else in the world found this game so fascinating.

I sat down to watch the first game and I was immediately annoyed. You know how when you watch regular sports and all you can hear is the occasional insight of washed up former player doing the play by play and you don't even notice the crowd at all? Well apparently, in soccer, the tradition of the fans is to be as annoying as possible by playing, and I'm going to use that word lightly, a sort of loud obnoxious horn called a vuvuzela for the whole game. I literally had to turn down the volume on my tv before I blew a hole in the back of my head. And yes, I used the word literally correctly there. Ok so, whatever, no big deal, I eventually understood that this was only a South African tradition and wasn't necessarily inherent to the actual sport itself. See, I was even getting educated about other cultures and stuff by watching.

Ok so once I got over the BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZing sound, I finally got acclimated to the pace of the game. That was until I witnessed the dreaded "offsides" penalty. Having read about this on Wikipedia, I figured that it must only happen once in a blue moon especially since the article I read praised the rule quite a bit. I found it to be the exact opposite. It is, in fact, the dumbest rule in sports ever. From what I understand, the rule is in place to prevent offensive players from just hanging around the opposing teams goal while waiting for the ball to be passed to him. This would, of course, be a "cheap shot" and I can sort of see the need for the rule to exist.

What I didn't seem to understand, however, was that this rule is applied even in the thick of the action. Take for example the game today between the USA and Slovenia. With 5 minutes left (although if you aren’t a soccer fan you would have no idea how much time is left because the dumb clock counts upward), the USA had a penalty kick which resulted in a GOAAAAAAAALLLLLLLL!!!!!!!! However, the goal was called back because the US player who scored the goal was called offsides. The play in question can be seen here. Now if you get done watching that and say "yup, offsides, clear as day" then I will punch you in the baby maker.

Anyway, offsides as implemented is a dumb rule. But what about the flopping? Is that Manu Ginobli and the rest of the San Antonio spurs out there on the soccer field? Nope, just like in the NBA, soccer players feign injury in attempt to draw a yellow card for the opposing team. I will never understand the logic behind this. If soccer is such a "pure" sport, why does cheating play such a big role in it?

Do you enjoy arbitrary and unilateral officiating? I sure as hell don't, but maybe that's because I live in America where bad decisions can be overturned and rules are clearly laid out. The referee in soccer has sole authority over the game. He can eject players, reverse goals, kill your family in their sleep and decide how much "extra time" will be played at the end of each half. That's right, soccer doesn’t have a "set" amount of time. After the game clock has expired (although, once again, you'd really have no idea it had if you didn't know the rules of soccer), the referee can then add an arbitrary and secret amount of time to each half. I'm told that this is because the clock never stops during play (dumb) and it is to compensate for the time wasting activities that occur during regular play. The referee then at some point just decides that the game is over. I'm guessing that countries that live under dictatorships are the reason for this rule. After all, you know who else liked to unilaterally and arbitrarily decide stuff, don't you? That's right, HITLER.

Ok, only one more bullet point to go. Soccer fans often tell me how exciting the games are and how there is constant action on the field. While the latter may be true, the former is most certainly not. As of this posting, 6 of 12 games have ended in a tie. That's right, a tie, in the biggest tournament in the world. A couple games even ended in a 0-0 tie. How very exciting indeed. The ties wouldn't be so bad for me if I had known what happens in the unlikely event of all teams in a group tying with same amount of goals. Should that happen, the advancing teams will be decided by, wait for it…..a LOTTERY. Are you kidding me!??! Drawing names out of a hat to decide who advances in the biggest tournament in the world!?!? WHAT?!

Ok end rant. 1 billion people in the world are watching the World Cup at any given moment, and that’s gotta stand for something about soccer, right? Right? No. In fact, I am convinced that those folks only think soccer is the greatest game in the world because it is all they have. For instance, I greatly doubt that Slovenia has a riveting college football season where they get to discuss the pros and cons of Slovenia U joining the Big Asia Conference. Anyway, I will most likely continue to watch this world cup. Hopefully after watching a few more games I will be able to understand why this sport is so damn popular.

As a side note, I’d like to point out that this was my 100th post on this blog! Where’s my celebratory cake and ice cream?

Which Korea is Best Korea?

There has been a great deal of news coverage lately with the talking heads discussing which Korea is best Korea. If you haven’t heard, relations between North and South Korea have reached a boiling point. A couple weeks ago, A South Korean naval ship was sunk off the coast of North Korea. After looking at all the evidence, the South Koreans determined that it was a North Korean torpedo that sunk the ship, claiming some 60 lives in the process. Also, if you haven’t already heard, the North and South Koreans are not exactly BFF. They have been involved in a war that never really ended for the past 40 or so years. Now, since I have a Masters in Pan-Asian Studies, I feel qualified to give you a brief description of how the North and South got to where they are today.

After the sinking, South Korea unfriended North Korea on facebook. They also set their relationship status to “complicated”, a common way for tweens to indicate that their relationship's are on the rocks. The North responded to this by hacking the South’s yahoo email address and forwarding a message of hate to all of the South’s contacts. The reports of this message are still fuzzy, but initial reports say it was along the lines of calling the South a bunch of “doody-heads” and insinuating promiscuity about their mothers.

The South responded to this act of aggression by tweeting about the North’s leader’s propensity to be “ronery, so very, very ronery”. North Korea was reportedly too busy following Justin Bieber updates to see the message, however. Kim Jong Il, aka the Illa of Manilla, threatened to use his WWI era technology to level Seoul, South Korea, if it sees any aggression on from the South. This is where we stand right now. The situation appears to be long past name calling and fart jokes. The UN reportedly was on the verge of writing up a strongly worded letter to the North. The letter apparently included the words "or else" and "we're really serious this time".

It is unlikely that the South would execute an attack any time in the near future, however, as Star Craft 2 is only weeks away from being released. As the entire economy of the South plunges to do lack of productivity, the North may have an ideal time to execute an attack plan of its own. North Koreans, as you know, have very little electricity and therefore are unable to play silly RPG games for hours on end. The release of Starcraft may very well prevent an all out war between the Koreas.

Tensions remain at an all time high as the world waits to see how this conflict will be resolved. One thing is for sure, this business will get out of hand. It will get out of hand and we will be lucky to live through it. (Lets play guess the quote). At any rate, officials urge everyone who had vacation plans in North Korea to seriously rethink how they got to that point in their lives with one official even saying “I didn’t think North Korea was even a real country”. Stay with me here for updates on this developing situation. I will pass along any and all trivial news about what we are now calling “The Great Saber Rattling Event of 2010 that happens to involved two countries that hate each other.” The world watches and waits.

Astros update

Ok, since not much else is going on right now, I felt like this would be a great opportunity to talk about the Astros as we near the end of the first quarter of the season. As it stands today, the Astros currently have a 13-24 record fresh off being swept by the Giants (A team who had just come off a large losing streak of its own). Sadly, many, if not all, of the predictions I made at the beginning of the season have come true.

The Astros currently hold the 2nd worst record in baseball, trailing the historically miserable Baltimore Orioles by only 1 game. The team batting average is hovering around .230. The usual offensive power of Berkman and Lee is nowhere to be found as both of them are hitting near .200. Kaz Matsui, one of the worst signings of the organization in the past 2 decades, is struggling to keep his batting average above .100. The offense simply isn’t here this year. And this isn’t like years past where the offense was bad. The ‘stros are literally losing games 2-1 and 1-0.

And that brings up the sole prediction I made this year that turned out to be wrong. The pitching has been nothing short of phenomenal. Roy Oswalt has an ERA of 2.62 and a 2-5 record to show for it. It has got to be demoralizing as a pitching knowing that if you give up 2 runs there is a really good chance of you losing the game. Knowing that you have to be nothing short of perfect every single time you trot out there cannot be healthy for your state of mind. And it isn’t just Oswalt, Myers and Wandy are also having good, solid outings with little to show in the win column for their efforts.

Sadly, I believe this kind of performance is necessary for management to wake up and make some hard decisions. As much as I hate to say it, we need to start looking into gutting the team. And I mean REALLY gutting. Oswalt said he would be willing to relinquish his no trade clause in exchange for going to a contender, and I cant really blame him. Berkman too says he would be willing to part ways with the club if it meant going with a team that looks like it is headed in the right direction. Along with Lee and Matsui, those 4 guys comprise the majority of the Astros budget.

I would really like to see the Astros building a team around the young talent on the club. I think they need to lock up Pence and Bourn long term now while they are still young. After that, they need to get back to the way they build the World Series team, by getting young talent from the draft and farm clubs. They need to stop signing overpaid, overweight (cheap shot), old players that are past their prime. Sadly, we gave up so much of our farm clubs to acquire big name hot shots like Carlos Beltran back in 2004. Since then they have just been going through the motions it seems, trying to buy championships instead of developing them.

Watching the team score 0-2 runs a game is getting old fast. I’ve been noticing fewer and fewer people at the home games. I can only hope that the team doesn’t descend into darkness for the next 16 years like the Pirates who haven’t had a winning season in nearly 20 years. Hopefully this “rebuilding year” will actually be a year with rebuilding. I’m not holding my breath…

Historical tweets

You probably read recently about an effort that is underway to archive and categorize the entirety of the twitterverse in the freaking Library of Congress. That’s right, the place where some of the most important documents in this country’s history reside will now also contain your melodrama about the time you couldn’t decide on what pair of pants to wear out of the house on laundry day. For a little bit of perspective on what this all will mean to future alien civilizations, I’ve gone back in time, along with twitter, and compiled some of the more interesting tweets from the past. Enjoy.

February 22, 1732: @GWashMeATon writes: Woke up this morning and the cherry tree was gone….I must have been SO wasted! BEST. NIGHT. EVAR.

July 12, 1750: @TheRealFranklin writes: Either I am really baked or I just invented electricity. LOL either way, I’m flying a kite in a lightning storm!

July 12, 1750: @ThomasEdisonGramp writes: Suck it, @TheRealFranklin!

July 4, 1776: @JeffersonROX: LOL, shit is getting real around here. Just signed a declaration of independance and told @KingGeorge to EABOD!!!!!1!

July 5, 1776: @NewUSCitizen writes: RT: @FreedomRULEZ We are now our own country! Bring on the reality TV and bacon double cheeseburgers!!!!!!!!

July 5, 1776: @WetBlanket writes: TV hasn’t been invented yet @NewUSCitizen, HURRRRR.

July 6, 1776: @JonHandontheCawk writes: Check out mah blog about our new country yall: http://newcountry.mayflowerblogs.com. It's teh BEES KNEES!

April 10 1782: @MalfunctioningEddy writes: I’m going crazy and slashing prices on my entire inventory of wagons. Hit the Oregon Trail in style by coming out to see us today!

August 31, 1803: @LewisAndClark writes: Spirits are high as we begin our expedition. Here’s hoping I brought enough pairs of pants LOL.

So there you have it, Tweets from the past. I do realize that I missed some tweets from some rather important historical events. But in my defense, I was out getting hammered with Jefferson and Franklin for the better part of my trip back in time. Boy did the food suck back then….no burritos or pizza rolls or anything.

I was a little leery at first of the idea to archive all that is Twitter. However, after my journey to the past, I can see now why this will not only be a great way to see what life was like back in the day to future generations, it will also help us to remember all the lolz we had in our own time. We will also be forced to look back and wonder why Justin Bieber was the top trending topic for a full 2 years…..

Ok, maybe it isn’t such a good idea after all.

Turbo Census

Census got you down? Does the whole “10 questions in 10 minutes” thing have you confused? Well you’re in luck! Introducing, TurboCensus, from the creators of TurboTax! The simplest and least confusing way to fill out the census form HASSLE FREE!

We here at MNN sat down with the CEO of TurboCensus and this is what he had to say: “Well we noticed after many successful years of TurboTax that the public wanted a simple way to fill out any and all government forms and we figured that this was the next logical step for us.”

WOW!

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Act right now and we’ll also send you a copy of TurboGetYourLifeTogether, FREE OF CHARGE! That’s right, the award winning software that walks you step by step throughout the process of getting your life back on track! YOURS FREE!

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You shouldn’t have to feel insecure about filling out your census form. And thanks to TurboCensus, you won’t have to! ORDER NOW!


This was my poor attempt at an April fools joke, btw.

Time for some baseball!

So, here we are a little over a week away from Major League Baseball Opening Day 2010. The Astros are finishing up spring training and have played remarkably well in my opinion. Now we all know that spring training games are about as useful in predicting how the actual season will go about as well as blind monkeys throwing darts at dartboards the size of a nickel, but nevertheless, the Astros have looked good. With that in mind, let’s break down this upcoming season and attempt to figure out how everything will pan out this year for the ‘stros.

Before we talk about what the Astros have going into this upcoming season, we have to take a look back at what we lost this past offseason. The most glaring discrepancy in the lineup is the loss of Miguel Tejada. Tejada was a free agent in the offseason and decided to go back to the Orioles organization with whom he had spent the better part of his major league career. Tejada was the Astros best hitter in the 2009 season. His team leading .313 batting average will be a major loss to a team that struggled hard to score runs last season. And while he only had 86 RBI’s last season, keep in mind that people actually have to be on base and generally in scoring position in order to score on a hit.

Another loss, the size of which could be debated longer than I am willing to spend on the topic, is the closer Jose Valverde. Valverde was unable to come even close to his national league leading 44 saves he achieved in 2008. Again though, this is more due to the fact that the Astros were rarely ever in a save situation at the end of ball games. His ERA of 2.33 was certainly not shabby and his arm will almost certainly be missed this year as the Astros did not go out on the open market and pick up another closer.

The refusal to go out on the free agent market and pick up veteran players at the positions of shortstop and closer mean that this will most likely be another down year (or “rebuilding year” for you optimists out there) even in the best scenario. It appears right now as if rookie Tommy Manzella will be the Astros’ opening day shortstop and rookie Brandon Lyon will be tasked with the duties of closer. Both of them seem to be having pretty decent spring trainings. Will they be able to fill the gaps left by two veteran powerhouses? That will have to remain to be seen.

One of the bigger disappointments for me was the realization that Kaz Matsui is still with the team. I suppose my dreams had me believing that his contract with the Astros was up at the end of the 2009 season, but alas, I was wrong. Matsui is one of those professional baseball oddball players that really makes you wonder how they managed to get multi-million dollar deals for being a below average player. Matsui is a perennial inning killer on offense and only slightly better than average at the second base position. Undoubtedly, the Astros will continue to march him out there as a starter and bat him in the 1 or 2 hole which means the chances of scoring first this season will remain low. If popping out to the first baseman in foul territory with runners on second and third with no out was a sport, Matsui would be the MVP.

Ok, with that out of my system, let’s move on to the starting rotation. If I had to sum up the rotation in one word, it would be this: terrifying. Last year, Roy Oswalt had what you might call an off year. Wandy Rodriguez somehow managed to end up becoming the ace of the ballclub. How many of you thought you’d ever hear yourselves thinking that!? These two are quite frankly going to both have career years in order for the Astros to be competitive. That’s because after them, there is really nobody. Brett Myers (old and terrible), Bud Norris (rookie), and Felipe Paulino (utterly terrible) round out the starting rotation. This is one of the weakest pitching staffs that the team has had for years. The Astros used to be a team known for their pitching and now they are going to have trouble having a single 15 game winner.

Carlos Lee, Lance Berkman and Hunter Pence are really going to have to carry the team offensively this season. Michal Bourne having another career year wouldn’t hurt either. I feel slightly more confident with the offense this year even with the loss of Tejada. Hopefully this new coach will place Matsui low in the lineup where he has the least possible opportunity to do damage. Time will have to tell how well Manzella does at the big league level offensively. Having a strong bat at shortstop will be instrumental in getting the Astros back above .500 this season.

Ok, prediction time. The lack of any proven starters behind Wandy and Oswalt is clearly going to be a detriment to the team. The only wild card here will be Bud Norris who showed some real promise late last season. The lack of a veteran on the left side of the infield is still some cause for concern. I would really like the Astros to go out and look for some trading opportunities for a real third base man sometime this season. Quintero and Towles are both miserable offensively. The 7,8,9 hitters of (hopefully) Matsui, Towles/Quintero, and the pitcher will generally be automatic outs every time they come around in the lineup essentially giving the Astros 9 less outs per game.

With all that in mind, all might not be lost. While I don’t think this team has any realistic chance of making the playoffs, .500 or better might not be that far off. I think it will be fair to estimate that the 2010 Astros will finish with around a 75-87 record this year on the upper end of the scale and a 60-102 last place in the division season on the lower side. In all likely hood it will be somewhere in between those 2 outcomes. They are still no where near the level of talent they had back in 2005 when they went to the World Series. Either way, I am still so glad that it is finally baseball season once again!

I’d like to end this post by talking about the Pirates for just a little bit. You see, Pirates fans have watched their team have losing season after losing season for the better part of 20 years. Us Astros fans have nothing on the patience and loyalty of those fans in Pittsburg who have watched and waited so long for their team just to be mediocre and competitive. The current word on the street is that THIS is the year for them. This is the .500 year. So while I will always root for the Astros, I will also be secretly rooting for the Pirates to finally break this beast that has been on their back for so long. Good luck Pirates fans!

Going legit

I was going to write about the recent Olympic Games in this post but something much more important has come up. Besides, screw the Olympics anyway, they had their fun in the sun already. Moving along, I ran across this article earlier today. I’ll give you a minute or so to peruse over it.

Finished? Good.

What that article boils down to in a nutshell is this: I am now an official news organization. If you have read any of this blog over the past 2 years, you know about the hard hitting journalism that I bring to the table on a quazi weekly basis. And now, I am finally getting some recognition for my efforts. Since I am now officially a member of the press corps, I will be rubbing elbows with other hard hitters of the media world: Cooper Anderson, Shepherd Smith and most importantly, Erin Burnett.

Now that I am legit, I expect the book deals and drunken yacht parties to begin immediately. And the money, don’t forget about the money! I’ve already begun making my official m1kepwn blogger press pass.

Another important part of being a news organization is the staff. I will be hiring quite a few unpaid interns in the upcoming weeks that will assist me with remembering to post on this site as well as reminding their friends and family to come to this site and view ads. Ads are really all news organizations care about anyway. Oh, and did I mention the money?

The next big step for me is to make a catchy 3 letter acronym for this site. MNN, or M1KEPWN NEWS NETWORK, seems to be the most appropriate. MNN, The Least Trusted Name in News. Damn, I just realized that I am going to need some kind of dramatic theme music to play when someone visits here. This will be another job for the interns as I simply have no time for it now.

And finally, I plan on doing my IPO for MNN in the near future. I will be adding an investor relations link sometime later in the day for all you potential investors out there who want to be a part of this glorious news outlet and share in its profits. I hope to be listed on the NYSE in a matter of weeks. Al investors will be invited to the aforementioned drunken yacht parties and will be treated with copious amounts of Brothers Fried Chicken.

Hello, ladies. Look at your man. Now back to me. Now back to your man. Now back to me. Sadly, he isn’t me. But if he got off his ass and onto the computer he could blog like me. Look again, the computer is now diamonds. Anything is possible when you become a legit news organization. I’m on a horse.

Mardi Gras

Ok so it has been another pretty long hiatus since my last post on this thing for a couple of reasons. 1: Super busy at work. 2. Vacation to New Orleans. And C: No new AdSense money goal. Lucky for you, the viewer, 2 of those things are really no longer an issue. The vacation is over and Christine and I once again have a goal of wasting the money we get from this thing on something awesome. Telling you what that awesomenss is will have to wait. With that in mind, here is a little recap of the time we had in New Orleans.

First off, the drive. We all convened on the wee hours of the Saturday morning before the trip. Knowing us, it shouldn’t have been a surprise to me to see my car loaded up with 6 handles of liquor amongst all the other travel related stuff. Surprisingly, my trunk was big enough to hold all the travel gear for 5 people. I had thought that my car might not be big enough to gang bang 5 people into for a 6 hour trip, but luckily I was wrong as everyone seemed to be pretty comfortable for the whole ride. I had also made a badass classic rock cd that lasted the entire duration of the trip.

One quick side note. One of these days, I am going pitch a television show to FOX called: “WTF IS HEATHER TALKING ABOUT?”. It will be just me and Heather walking down the street with a film crew and having some random people talk to us and attempt to decipher what she is trying to say. I’m telling you, this idea is a comedy gold mine. Heather, you are hilarious!

Anyway, back to the story. As you can imagine, the city was quite packed for Mardi Gras. It literally seemed like every street to our hotel was blocked off. Needless to say we eventually got there and, of course, headed straight to the casino. Now for the record, I think I can honestly say that I enjoy going to New Orleans any other time of the year. I’m not saying that I didn’t have a good time this trip, I did. It’s just that it was impossible to get anywhere at all while the parade was going on. In fact, if I see zero more parades in my life it will be way too many.

We, of course, did all the normal stuff there is to do in New Orleans. Casino, Bourbon Street, Mother’s, and Pat O'Briens. There was also this pretty legit sushi place in the lobby of our hotel that hooked us up with free saki because, get this, they couldn’t sell it to us because they didn’t have a liquor license. Oh New Orleans, I love how the rules don’t apply to you.

Speaking of our hotel, due to the people to bed ratio being inadequate, we brought along an inflatable mattress to compensate. Now, I have never really had a good experience with air mattri. They are generally always pieces of junk that deflate within a couple hours of laying on them. However, the one we brought absolutely takes the cake. It was so crappy, in fact, the phrase “Somalia Bed” was quickly coined to use when talking about it. The only upside to brining the thing along was the use of its blower as a hair dryer when it was discovered the one that came with the room did not work. That was my idea, btw…

Another one of the bigger oddities of the trip was the sheer amount of Brother’s Fried Chicken that was consumed. There was this grocery store 2 blocks down from our hotel called Brother’s that made one hell of a fried chicken strip bucket and invariably someone would always headed down there around 2-3 in the morning and literally pick up buckets of it. Our hotel room was literally covered with these boxes of empty fried chicken by the time the trip was over. It was simply ridiculous.

Ok, now for the absolute strangest part of the trip. On our last full day there, Fat Tuesday, we got up bright and early (12PM) and headed to the iHop on Canal Street. After a short wait, we were seated and started ordering our food. QUICK TIP: Apparently unlimited fountain drink refill only applies to sodas….not apple juice. I had to learn that the hard way after getting my check and seeing an additional $7.50 tacked on for the 3 apple juices I got. WTF?! Anyway, so we look over about midway through our meal and take a look at the person at the check out counter. Instead of seeing say your average age person collection money and making change, there was a young girl who was most definitely no older than 9 years old. She was completely running the place. Ordering servers around, yelling out guest’s names whose tables were ready. EVERYTHING! We’re pretty sure she even fired a bus boy…. Just another example of how rules and regulations like child labor laws simply do not apply to this town!

So yes, as you can see, we all had a really good time on this trip. I glossed over some of the more crazy parts as they are probably not even internet appropriate. I sang horrible karaoke one night and completely lost my voice. I got violently ill after returning back to Houston and I am only now getting over it. New Orleans is simply a great place to have a great time. I love going there and I dare even say I like it more than going to Vegas. So yes, there you go. Great story huh?

Here is one more gem before I sign off:

Housekeeping: (knock, knock, knock) “what time are you guys checking out”?

Us: “We arranged late checkout, we’re leaving at noon.”

Housekeeping: “12 noon?”

Us: “……Yes…..12, noon” (as opposed to the other time of the day that is noon…)

I am going to try to write a recap of the winter Olympics soon before I forget about all the stuff that interested me. Hopefully it will not be another month before something gets posted up here again!

OMG LOST

Tonight begins the final season of the television show LOST. For 6 years now, this show has had more WTF moments than anyone deserves in a lifetime. And while I love the show, part of me is ready for it to be over. With that in mind, I only have a few burning questions that I want to be answered this final season. I could honestly care less who Kate ends up banging or in what shape Sun’s garden will end up in. But then again, what the hell do I know? Perhaps Sun planting her garden is the one clue that solidifies the entire story and it has been there the entire time for us to see. The show could honestly end in weirder ways than that.

The biggest thing I want explained is the Smoke Monster. In all honesty it is probably the reason I watch the show more than anything else other than the time travel aspect. Seriously, wtf? Monsters are already scary enough. Make them out of mysterious smoke and you have one of the most horrifying characters in television history. Are there more than one? If so, how many? And why so many? If the smoke monster is so powerful, why does it spend its time tromping around the jungle and not hanging out at Hollywood parties sippin’ on Cognac? Why did it kill Mr. Eko but spare the lives of others? These are the main questions I want answered.

Speaking of the others…wtf? Who are these mysterious people who were on the island before anyone else? Are they like the “Na’vi” in that movie Avatar? Or are they more like the “Navi” in the movie Ferngully: The Last Rainforest? And why does Richard Alpert wear eyeliner and never age? And why was he a hitman in the movie Smokin’ Aces, where by the way, he also kills Jack...

And finally, what is the Island? Why is it so hell bent on affecting so many people’s lives? How did a giant wooden ship laden with the bones of slaves end up in the middle of it? Why is there not a giant tree where the Others live like in Avatar and Ferngully? Did Locke accidentally the whole island when the swan clock hit zero? Do the numbers have anything to do with the story line at all save for Hurley thinking he is insane? Will the entire story of Lost have an ending at all? If so, how many? If not, well, I guess I can always go back and finish Alias to see if it ever had an ending…

So there, 23 questions I want to have answered in the next 4 months. I think that is pretty fair since there are well over eleventy billion unanswered questions. If I am doing my math correctly, and I like to think that I am, I am only asking for a mere negative infinity percent of outstanding questions to be resolved. You see, eleventy billion isn’t even a real number. That’s how many mysteries there are on this show. And God help the producers if the whole thing ends up being in a snow globe and validating all the haters over the years.

At any rate, only 10 more hours to wait.

End of an era

We had a really good run in space over that last 50 years. In that span we put the first American in space, landed on the moon 6 times (allegedly) and built a space station the size of a football field. All of this was accomplished by nearly 150 manned missions which cost the lives of 17 brave astronauts who dared to believe that what they were doing was important enough for them to risk their lives in the first place. September 16th of this year will mark the last manned space flight launch in the United States.

Today, the president unveiled his budget which effectively cut the Space Shuttle’s replacement, aka The Constellation Program, as well as offering up no other plan for the future. Their goal is to have private companies pick up the slack and in the meantime have the Russians launch all astronauts to and from the International Space Station. The private contractors, by the way, are at about the same technological place that NASA was back in the early 1960’s. We are effectively starting over except this time billions and billions of government dollars will not be behind any advancement. Private capital will have to fill the void.

The trouble is, manned space flight is not currently at a point where is will be profitable to launch humans into space. Let alone in the private sector. The result of which means that in reality, we will most likely not have a manned space flight launch into Low Earth Orbit for a good amount of time. I am talking about decades here folks. Where once it seemed like a human landing on Mars was only 10 years away now seems like it will be more than a century, at least for the United States, that is. Russia and China have both stated Mars to be a human destination for them and are pursuing it rigorously. Unfortunately, the reality of this kick in the ass will probably be the only thing that revitalizes America’s desire to go back into space.

The trouble is that many people simply got bored with NASA over the past 20 years. Space travel became routine and it seemed that only disaster was able to capture the attention of the US citizens. Most people out there will probably not even realize that we will no longer have a manned space program. Even fewer will care. NASA has done a piss poor job of letting the public know about all the good work it has done over the years. We are all going to live longer and healthier lives as a result of all the advancement that has come out of the space program. It truly saddens me that people have become so apathetic about one of the things America does best.

It will be strange living in a world where we tell our children: “Hey, look up there, that is outer space. We used to go there and it was awesome. Now we don’t.” In all honesty, I REALLY hope that the Chinese and Russians stay on track and have successful manned space programs. It will just be a shame that those other countries will be on the leading edge of understanding and exploring the universe instead of us. I hope I will be able to make time to head out to Cape Canaveral, Florida to witness one of the final 5 launches of the greatest space program in the history of mankind. And hopefully I will look back on this blog post in 10 years and laugh at just what the hell I was thinking.

*Quick Note* I don't really like talking about politics since it is generally redundant talking about it with people who have philosophical differences with the way you think. But the simple fact is that the numbers don't lie. This year, we bailed out banks to the tune of almost 1 trillion dollars. The entire budget alone for this year is some 3 trillion dollars. The entire budget for all of NASA? 18 billion dollars. That's less than .6% of the entire United States budget. So if this decision isn't about the money, the only other thing it could be is simply lacking the desire to do it anymore. I can only imagine what kind of world we would live in today if Spain had decided not to fund Columbus' trip back in 1492. Ok ya, that turned out to be a little bit longer than a quick note.

2009: A Year in Review

Wow, it has been quite a while since I have updated this thing. December was a busy month at work and having my entire extended family over during the holidays didn’t make things any easier. So anyway, here is 2009: A Year in Review.

I made several trips out to New Orleans last year, 3 in fact, which means I ended up going there a total of 5 times in less than a one year period. I don’t know what it is about that city but I have never managed to have anything less than an amazing time there, even when having to evacuate due to hurricanes. Of course it also doesn’t hurt that the casino there has been more than generous to me. The plan right now is to head out to New Orleans once again when Mardi Gras rolls around in the middle of February. It is going to be epic.

One of the more negative aspects of 2009 was my endless love/hate relationship with my Xbox 360. My original Xbox had the RRoD and due to the fact that it was out of warranty, I decided to try to fix it myself. This worked, more or less, for the better part of 3 months before I decided to just bite the bullet and buy a new one. Of course, within 2 weeks of getting the new one, Microsoft dropped the ban hammer of all modified consoles and I was once again without one. This story does not end sadly, as it convinced me to build a HTPC ( Home Theater PC ) for watching stuff online, which was really the only thing I was using the Xbox for anyway.

One of the bigger experiments this year was me cutting the cable, and going exclusively to online video watching. This is still more or less a work in progress. It has been about 6 months now and I haven’t once yet felt the need to have cable tv again. My Boxee setup has worked great so far and I can’t ever imagine paying money to watch commercials ever again.

2009 also saw the end of the Exploder. My beloved car was sent to the scrap heap when I got some of that Obama Money, aka Cash for Clunkers. Many of you who had the pleasure of riding in my former car know that clunker doesn’t even begin to describe what my 1998 Explorer Sport was. I’m still loving my new Honda Accord. Going 500 miles with out having to fill up is quite simply ridiculous. Oh, and the AC actually works in this new car!

In September I made it out to Las Vegas once again. If you haven’t read my write up of that vacation, I encourage you to do so. It is filled with mystery, intrigue, people getting kicked out of casinos and cups made of ice. And that was all just in one night! Vegas is one of those places where staying too long makes you wish you had never even come in the first place. Luckily this time around we only stayed for 3 nights instead of the 4 we stayed the year before. My brother is turning 21 this year so it is more than likely that another trip will be made out to Vegas in June.

2009 will probably be remembered most for the amount of smoking I did. I have become somewhat of a master chef when it comes to slow cooking meat out on the smoker. I did all things from brisket, ribs, chicken and my favorite, pulled pork shoulder. The goal for this year is to participate in some sort of cook off to see how well my stuff compares to others. Spoiler alert, it kicks all their asses.

I finally made it out to the Texas Renaissance Fair last year. It was honestly one of the most bizarre places I have ever been. I still don’t understand the whole tail thing, but to each their own I suppose. The day we went to TRF was unique in that it was the first time I ever drank wine out of a can. You see, it is much more socially acceptable to drink in public when the public thinks you are just drinking soda. And don’t even get me started on how much more active it makes you feel and the amount of gesturing you will be able to do now that you are sans wine glass. Thanks “Always Suuny” for the idea!

How could I forget about Champagne Campaign 2K9? It turns out, very easily when large amounts of champagne is involved. Bar none, the party, which we threw over Halloween, was the most awesome event ever. The riot punch we concocted was nothing less than deliciously lethal. It also had dry ice in it which made it even more bad ass. No fewer than half of the people at the party ended up hurling in the front yard. That’s how you know they had a good time! Oh, and people doing “the thriller dance” was probably the funniest thing I have ever seen.

So a lot happened in 2009. We now move into ‘010 with another set of resolutions never to be fulfilled. Actually, one goal that will most likely be fulfilled this year is my quest to get a free Miller High Life jacket as part of the rewards program they are currently running. I am more than 500 beers in and only need a paltry 300 more to achieve this stupid goal of mine. So, by all means, come hang out this year and bong a few High Life’s with us and then chase it with a shot of Rumpplemintz. You definitely won’t regret it (right away).

*Programming note, it appears that I am fast approaching my 100th post on this blog. I will have to think long and hard about how to facilitate such a momentous event. Perhaps a live studio audience or something? At any rate, I’ll let you know once I have it figured out.