Countdown to Awesome, Part the Second

In honor of my students, who just averaged a C+ on their second paper (really, is it that hard to find a 3rd source out of the 12 essays in the chapter?), I bring you this gem from The Onion:

"You Know What's Stupid? Everything I Don't Understand"

by Steve Bowman

For far too long I've sat idly by, twiddling my thumbs and respecting the right of others to form thoughts and opinions independent of my own, and I can't take it anymore. I've got to speak up about the many things that annoy me or I'm going to go crazy. Take these new credit cards with the microchips in them, for instance. Man, those things really get my goat—trying to improve a device that was working perfectly fine as it was. Even worse are those wrappers on CDs that take forever to open. But you know what I hate the most? The one thing that makes my blood boil whenever I see it? Anything beyond my mental capacity, that's what.

God, all the people, places, and things I haven't made the least bit of effort to comprehend should just die already.

Will you look at all this stuff I have neither the intellect nor the maturity level to process? What a load of crap. It's in my face every day, doing lots of things I don't have an immediate desire to do and saying things I can't identify with at this stage in my life. How lame is that? I mean, what kind of pathetic loser would actually enjoy something that's so incredibly not among my personal preferences? Not me, that's for sure.

Maybe my standards are too high, but if you like any of the hundreds upon hundreds of things that are too multifaceted for my attention span, you should have your head examined, weirdo.

And don't even get me started on complex and sophisticated notions I can't possibly wrap my head around. That stuff makes me want to puke. Just knowing there are people out there who like—actually like—interacting with concepts that overwhelm my feeble consciousness makes me embarrassed to be an American. I don't like it in our homes, I don't like it in our schools, I don't like it outside of my comfort zone—well, I just plain don't like it. And if that makes me closed-minded, well, then I guess I'll have to dismiss that accusation outright in order to avoid being introspective even for a moment.

Why, only yesterday I saw a commercial on TV for a new product I have no immediate use for and therefore cannot see any value in. Who's making this worthless junk? Seriously. If I see one more household appliance I am not mature enough to own or operate, I'm going to punch someone. I swear. Sell that to the suckers with the money and inclination to buy it, because I wouldn't take it off your hands if you gave it to me, provided me with a living situation stable enough to house it, and showed me how to use it in a manner that didn't disrupt any of my cripplingly sedentary lifestyle habits.

Same goes with any TV show, movie, band, solo act, artist, book, burgeoning subculture, celebrity, fashion trend, or religious belief that makes me feel excluded from my peers or otherwise ostracized by the mainstream. That stuff is retarded.

While I'm at it, I'm sick to death of this growing trend of people who don't share my cultural heritage. I don't know how you did things back in that country I never took the time to educate myself about, but around here, we dip our fries in ketchup. That's the way it's always been as far as I know, and that's the way it's going to be until such time as I choose to acknowledge diversity among the earth's 6.6 billion people.

If things don't start changing around here, I might have to up and leave this town. It's gotten to the point where I can't walk down the street without having some flier thrust into my face, advertising some dumb concert or stupid party or annoying art festival or lame-o Minnesota primary or any number of other events that no sane person with a crippling fear of the unknown and a wildly underdeveloped imagination would ever want to go to. I've never been to any of these social gatherings, but I imagine the scores of people who attend them must be total idiots.

You know what? You geeks go knock yourselves out. Really. Have a blast with all your differences in personality and preference. Don't worry about me, because I'll be sitting at home alone listening to the same four records I've been listening to since college, laughing at your expense.

What a bunch of losers.

~~~~~~~

(don't forget to tune in tomorrow for the 100th Post Spectacular!)

Countdown to awesome, Part I

Only 3 more posts before the century mark, so I've got to make these count. I've been trying to hold off on posting so that #100 is timed for Feb 29th, but we'll see how well that works...

The weather's been miserable up in BG, as it just got cold enough yesterday afternoon for the 5+ inches of slush to freeze over, making me slide for about 25 feet down one of the streets on campus (thank God the other car choose to turn before hitting me). Now, so I don't have to worry about scraping my car out, I'm going to try to walk up to campus (with maybe a quick McGriddle stop on the way).

Last weekend was full of meeting people for meals, and I went 4 days without eating a meal by myself (which might be a record unbroken until I go to prison). I'll wish good luck to Dan in his attempts to buy ex-Soviet firearms and give a quick shoutout to Jay, who apparently has the soul of a jazz singer...

Plus, I've found this to hold me over the next two weeks until Smash Bros comes out for Wii: Comrade Mario

Never pick a fight with someone who buys ink by the barrell...

These last couple of weeks have been nothing short of yucky. As Husband eluded to, my place of work has been enbroiled in controvesry. That which I cannot, well should not, talk about, but I will say that in my opinion it is all a bunch of hooey dredged up by a small time paper attempting to muckrack in the most unsuccessful of fashions. Unfortunatly, the pathetic attempt at journalism has led to the resignation of a good person and her great colleagues from a project that they have been working on for nearly 2 years. The resignation came not from any admission of wrongdoing, but because this faux-controversy has taken attention away from the things we should be giving our attention to. It's sad and disheartening. There are so many people who are trying to do really good work for our community. I cannot fathom why others would try to jepordize that in order to advanced their own interests. They should all be ashamed of themselves.

Needless to say it's been a couple of really really hard weeks for me. This had led to a reaccurring urge to drink a half bottle of NyQuil or half a bottle of wine to put me to sleep at night. This is probably not a sign of good stress management. Eh? Then I wake up this morning to the following scene...

And I have three voicemails and seventeen emails regarding the front-page above-the-fold article in today's paper, and then I look at the dog...

And it takes everything in me to not crawl under that blanket with her and call in sick.

The history channel just redeemed itself...

Doug Benson:
A man and a woman are in an elevator.
The woman says "Can I smell your balls?"
The man looks incredulous, "Of course not!" "
Oh," says the woman, "that must be your feet."


Patton Oswalt:
A 40-year-old man and a young boy are walking in the dark woods at night.
The boy looks up and says, "Mister, I'm scared."
The old man goes, "You're scared? I have to walk out of here alone!"

Gotta love History of the Joke

You're the most sensitive man I know, and I know God

It's one of those Mondays at the Batcave. I'm struggling to finish a couple papers for Tuesday's classes, and The Dog is sleeping, but I think she's kind of sick. I get to look forward to more snow for tomorrow's drive, so I'm really not looking forward to that whole mess.

The weekend was relatively relaxing and refreshing, considering the wife has been dealing with a public-relations meltdown at work for the last two weeks, and I'm swamped by a rediculously heavy work load this semester. I'm very much looking forward to the upcoming PCA conference in San Fran, assuming I can get the damn presentation written (or just put together enough pictures to take up 12 minutes).

I guess the third year isn't the Web Anniversary

I doubt anyone but Johnnycakes will get this, but it was too good resist:

Happy St. Valentine's Day from the ISB!

Snow Day?!?

Even though it doesn't look like there's been 8 inches of snow, it's sleeting and ActiveDayton's reporting 6 accidents just along the Dayton stretch of I-75. It looks like Northwest Ohio didn't get hit as hard, but I'm not going to chance icy roads in my little Honda. It's back to bed for me (read-writing the papers for class tonight and emailing them to the profs)

"We all have our own hands, and we come from different moms."

If you don't know why that's awesome, you need awesome lessons.

Well, after having a nice layering of rain, ice, and snow yesterday afternoon, it got a lot colder over night and everything just froze. Stupid BG weather...

I realized that I'm only 5 posts away from the 100th Blogging! I'm not sure what I'm going to do to celebrate, but it will involve malt liquor.

Primary Disfunction

I love the delicisous awesomeness that is campaign season. Although the use of the word "season" is somewhat deceptive as we have gotten to the point where campaigns are more of a constant state of affairs, but I digress...

Yesterday was Super Tuesday and boy was it super! Obama is giving Hillary the race of her life which just encourages her ever-permanent scowl to the point that I think her face may never recover. Huckabee is turning out to be the dark horse on the GOP side in a way that is making this race much more interesting then the past few primaries. And all this talk about delegates and superdelegates and winner takes all primary histeria.... It's great! But in all honesty, I need to cut down my election night adiction to news networks. It's probably not healthy...

I just love the disfunction and the confusion and the "I'm not negative so I want you to think I'm being nice while I'm actually tearing apart my opponent." Not to mention the "I'm winning, SHE is losing.... NO, I'm winning, HE is losing" tantrums and appeals for voters attention and support. It's totally American and I love it.

implied clown fellatio = funny

Heard on the radio while driving to work this morning:

News Announcer: [talking about funeral for famous circus clown] The minister, himself a clown trained by the deceased, blew bubbles on the pulpit...

Radio DJ: Well, at least Bubbles enjoyed the funeral!

foreshadowing?

My horoscope for this week:

Your skin will soon feel like it's crawling with insects, but fear not: Spiders are actually arachnids.

I learned fried chicken at the school of hard knocks

Not too shabby of a game last night, despite me calling a Pats win with 3:00 left in the game...

Combined with the meat sweats, this made watching the commercials slightly less jarring. Seriously, if you're going to pay 2.7 mil to show a dog drinking Gatorade, would it kill you to throw in a punch line?

There were a few enjoyable bits, such as the Charles Barkley/Dwayne Wade phone-based relationship and the early Pepsi Max bit. Otherwise, most of the ads were somewhat disappointing (although I really liked seeing the Fox NFL robot get in a fight with a Terminator).

My favorite ad was the Doritos "mousetrap" spot. It had a solid setup, with some nice minor touches (like the guy using an exact-o knife to precisely cut the bait chip), the giant rat-suited guy busting out of the wall was unexpected and amusing, and there was a good post-product joke of the rat continuing to wail on the guy. I give it 4 1/2 sparkplugs.