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May 20, 2008

I Like it in Flyover Country, Thank You Very Much

As you all probably know, I grew up in Arizona. Whether that constitutes the "West Coast" is open to debate, and I really don't care. But, in any event, I spent lots of time in Los Angeles when I was a kid, so I feel qualified to comment on various things about the region. For example, it fucking sucks. But, aside from that, it is clear to me that, at least compared to people from Los Angeles, people from Wisconsin are almost unbelievably nice. Some of the people I love most are from L.A., but that doesn't change the fact...

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April 21, 2008

I Want a Prius

I currently drive a Nissan Xterra. It's a fucking awesome car. I've had it for almost six years now, and in that time it's broken down exactly once--the fuel pump went out. Granted, I was offroading in the middle of nowhere at the time, but that's not the car's fault. And it was covered by warranty, anyway. That's the only time the car's ever let me down. Other than that, it's done everything I could ask of it. It moved me across the country, carried my friends and I to Miami and back, and took me to all manner of...

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April 16, 2008

Fuck Kim Kardashian. In a Bad Way.

I think celebrities are stupid. I think that celebrities are, for the most part, worthless, vapid people. I think that people who are obsessed with celebrities are even stupider. I think it is extremely depressing that there are people in the world who think of Paris Hilton as a role model. Still, I check The Superficial several times a day. I do this for two reasons. First, they post pictures of hot girls at least several times a week. Second, they don't so much glorify celebrities as they do make fun of them. I love seeing people I hate fail,...

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March 10, 2008

Harbingers of Doom

We are fucked. Oil prices are breaking new records every day. We are mired in an endless war. Our President doesn't seem to mind torture. Our leaders are more corrupt than ever. Or perhaps they're not, which is even scarier. Yes, it seems that at almost every turn, we are confronted by evidence that our entire civilization is heading for the shit can. But the most compelling evidence that our culture is (rightfully) doomed comes from Hollywood. Yes, at a time when the entire entertainment industry seems to be completely out of original ideas and left with no option but...

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January 28, 2008

The State of the Union

I generally don't watch the State of the Union address, mostly because it's boring and dumb. It's not that I don't think politics and policy are interesting, it's that I think that the State of the Union, especially in the hands of untalented orators, is an extremely tedious exercise. The idea of our country's chief executive going to the headquarters of the Congress--the only branch of our government that is elected directly by the people--and telling them what's up is a very good, profound idea. But presidents tend to use the State of the Union not as a platform to...

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It Makes Me So Angry . . . . (Updated)

I am not an ad executive. I have never been to business school or even taken a marketing class. I have never written copy or tried to sell anything. I am completely naive as to what it takes to brand and sell a product. I want you all to keep this in mind for what follows. You see, although I am completely ignorant as to what it takes to market a product, I would assume--based on nothing other than common sense (which apparently tells some people that the ass is a reproductive organ)--that an advertising campaign that makes anyone that...

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January 26, 2008

Me and 9,999,999 of My Closest Friends

I have a deep, dark secret. One that only some of my closest friends know about. But it's time I come clean. I feel that, by hiding this secret from the world, I've erected a barrier between myself and the world at large that prevents me from finding real intimacy. So here goes. I play World of Warcraft. There. Now you know. Please don't judge me too harshly. It's a natural progression, really, seeing as how I played a hell of a lot of Magic: The Gathering in high school. Yeah, the girls loved me. For those of you who...

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January 21, 2008

But There Was No Joy in Mudville . . . .

I can honestly say that I was more excited for the Packers-Giants game today than any other professional sports game ever, mostly due to the fact that this is one of the few such games I've ever been excited about. This after a lifetime of hating all sports. That started changing this year, first with watching the Badgers every week at L-Dawg and X-tina's. And then, when that was all over, Mr. Vice and pH got me excited for the Packers. The three of us ended up in a bowling alley watching the Packers-Cowboys game, and I didn't mind standing...

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January 17, 2008

Tom Cruise Is the Bat-Shit Craziest

Most of you have probably seen this already, but I just think it's too funny in the creepiest possible way not to post. It's apparently a video produced by the "Church" of Scientology for internal purposes. They're apparently pissed that it got out. And with good reason, because I don't see how anyone could take them seriously after this. Not that there were any reasons to think they were legitimate before. Anyway, without further ado, I give you perhaps the craziest, creepiest person in Hollywood, which is saying a lot (incidentally, Mr. Cruise uses some jargon that I wasn't familiar...

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January 16, 2008

Advice!

I fucking love Savage Love. There's something infinitely entertaining about reading letters in which people reveal how fucked up their lives are. It's also sort of interesting to see how stupid people are. I mean, how much sense does it take to know you've gotta leave someone even if they're really nice to you between the beatings? Unfortunately, Dan's latest columns have been kind of lame. I mean, why did he decide to field the question by the girl who felt strange about wearing panties with Disney princesses on them? Not only is that hot in itself, most of the...

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October 22, 2007

How Not to Write a Movie Review

I think I've mentioned before that I love reading good reviews for bad movies. A good bad-movie review can be really funny and entertaining. Like everything else, though, there are bad bad-movie reviews. And, of course, there are stupid bad-movie reviews. I found this example of a stupid bad-movie review, written by Armond White, the other day while looking on Rotten Tomatoes at the reviews of Tyler Perry's Why Did I Get Married?. Mr. White's review would border on offensive if it wasn't so stupid. So it promopted me to come up with a few general guidelines for writing a...

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September 16, 2007

The Tenth Thing to Love About Madison: The Farmer's Market

So, although I've lived in Madison for over three years now, I had never made it down to the famed farmer's market around the capital. This was partly due to the fact that I hate getting up early on weekends--or at all, really--and the fact that I don't really buy a lot of produce, anyway. But I finally went this weekend, and it was pretty good. First of all, there's not just produce, although there's certainly lots of that. But there's also a shitload of a really good baked goods (I had an awesome cheese danish), lots of meat products...

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August 29, 2007

Honor Shakespeare, Dishonor Nirvana

I went to see an outdoor performance of Much Ado About Nothing tonight. Although I have read several Shakespeare plays, this was the first time I actually got to see one performed. I thought it was pretty good, although I still think that Shakespeare is pretty ridiculous and the dialogue is sometimes impenetrable, especially when it's mumbled in an outdoor venue. Still, the outdoor stage made the whole thing much cooler, except for the part where it started raining really, really hard. But that only lasted for about ten mintues and, after a brief break, the play resumed. The second...

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June 21, 2007

Fuck Everything. Just--Fuck!

Some time ago, I posted about what I thought of The Smashing Pumpkins' new song, Tarantula. As it turns out, the song is mediocre and, although my hopes had not been high, it confirmed that the new album probably wouldn't be that great. Well today, thanks to some anonymous poster, I know that the picture on the cover of the single for that song features Paris motherfucking Hilton. Why? How the fuck should I know? Here's the fucking cover: . I swear to god, Billy Corgan--what the fuck?...

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June 15, 2007

Here's Something . . .

Good fancy crap, I've been busy. That, together with the laziness that's left over after I finish the stuff I have to do everyday, leaves me with very little time to write out a semi-intelligible thought on here. More importantly, however, absolutely nothing of great import has happened lately, leaving me without things to share. My lack of time has been so complete, in fact, that I haven't even really had time to keep up with any news, so I don't even have anything unrelated to me to rant about. I plan on fixing that right now. First of all,...

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June 5, 2007

Things I Cannot Live Without and Are You British or Retarded?

When I first saw that Apple was releasing a phone, I was underwhelmed. Then I saw the TV ads. And, although the last thing I wanted to do was join the legions of mindless iPodophiles out there, I don't see how I can continue living without one. I mean, seriously--it's a fucking touchscreen phone that does pretty much every cool technological thing you could ask a small, portable device to do. I don't care what anyone says--touchscreens are awesome. Sure, they've generally sucked on phones, but that's mostly because they were designed to be used with those lame stylus things...

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February 26, 2007

I Just Don't Get It

I know I'm probably in the unbelievable minority on this, but I just don't think Beyonce Knowles is attractive. I don't know what it is that people find attractive about her. I mean--seriously? I mean, I guess she looked decent as Foxxy Cleopatra, but she was the least attractive Austin Powers girl by far: Her Sports Illustrated cover does nothing for me: I guess it looks like she's got smooth skin, which is a plus. But, really, I just don't see it. And, finally, her appearance at the Oscars leaves me cold: Maybe I'm crazy, but I always thought that...

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January 31, 2007

The Fourth Thing to Love About Madison: Bucky Badger

Now, I have to admit that the first time I ever saw Bucky, I thought he was the gayest mascot in the land. But that's because I saw the wood carving statute at State Street Brats, which, it must be admitted, is rather gay looking. But, since those first naive days of my 1L years, I've come to love Mr. Buckingham U. Badger. Bucky is the best mix of manly aggression and adorable cuteness. Yeah, he's technically part of the cheerleading squad, but he's also able to do something like sixty push ups when we're beating second-rate football teams like...

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December 21, 2006

Harry Potter and the . . .

Yes, the title of the last Harry Potter book has finally been announced, and it is: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. I can't fucking wait for this book, it's going to be amazing and so sad to see the whole thing end. Also, I think the fact that "death" is right there in the title is a pretty good indication of what we can expect. I can't fucking wait. On another note . . . While surfing Youtube in an attempt to procrastinate, I found this video, which is pretty much awesome. Check it out: I'm currently obsessed with...

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December 9, 2006

The Second Thing to Love About Madison: State Street

You know that scene in The Fellowship of the Ring where Sam stops and he says that if he takes one more step, he'll be further from home than he's ever been before? Well, I had one of those moments when I left Flagstaff and drove East. Although I had been to New York City and Boston before, I hadn't driven further East than the Eastern Arizona border. Yes, even though I had lived in Arizona my whole life, I had never been to New Mexico. Now that I have, I know I wasn't missing much. Anyway, my friends were...

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December 8, 2006

Infinite Sadness

I know that December 7th is a day that will live in infamy, but the day is special for me because something positive happened that day. You see, it was ten years ago today (or yesterday, I guess) that I first saw the Smashing Pumpkins live and in concert. It was on their Infinite Sadness tour, in support of Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness. It was at the very height of their popularity, and it was the biggest crowd I've ever seen them play for. It was at the America West Arena in Phoenix. And it was awesome. The...

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November 24, 2006

The Cart Well Before the Horse

I am the proud owner of the latest Zelda game, Twilight Princess. How does it compare to the Ocarina of Time and Windwaker? I have no idea. You see, I bought the Wii version of Twilight Princess. This poses a bit of a problem because I don't actually own the Wii yet. See, people have apparently been camping out in front of stores for the Wii. That's fucking crazy, as far as I'm concerned. There are certain things I'll camp out for (i.e., Star Wars movies), but I refuse to wait out for a new game system. Or, rather, I...

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November 18, 2006

A Great Time to Be a Nerd

While trolling around the Internet today, I found this awesome poster for the forthcoming Harry Potter movie. I think it's pretty much unbelievably awesome. I also found a few other new Harry Potter pictures, most notably one of Dumbledore's Army. I pretty much love that picture. You can see Harry in the middle, obviously, then Cho to his left, then . . . were both Padma and Pavarti in the DA, or is that the snitch next to Cho? In any event, then Ginny, then Zacharias Smith, then some other dude. Fred, George, and Neville behind Harry, Hermione to his...

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November 6, 2006

Cause I'm a Punkrocker, Yes I Am!

I've got the song from this commercial stuck in my head: It's called "Punkrocker," and it's by a band called the Teddybears, featuring Iggy Pop. I really like the song, even though I recognize that it's not the best song. That brings me to something I've been thinking about for a long time. Why is it so hard for contemporary bands to combine excellent musicianship, melody, and loud guitars? Most current bands have, at most, two of those three. But it's not just doing it for me anymore. That brings me to something else that's been on my mind. I've...

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November 2, 2006

Six Days . . .

The elections are in six days. That means that, in six days, we get to see if Wisconsin will be the first state in the country with voters intelligent enough to reject a constitutional ban on gay marriage. While I'd love to believe that the people of my state are not ridiculously homophobic, I doubt that we'll be able to pull it off. I don't understand why people support this thing. No one, not a single person, has been able to explain to me how allowing gay people to marry would hurt anyone, let alone straight people who are married...

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October 18, 2006

Stuff That's on My Mind

I noticed something yesterday as I was walking to school. Or, rather, I didn't notice something. That's right, those fucking cows are finally gone! Happy days are here again. I honestly can't believe that they kept them out that long. That's fucking bullshit. Two days of those ugly things was way too much, in my opinion. Apparently, a Massachusetts school has banned playing tag. That's one of the stupidest fucking things I've ever heard. Tag is what kids are supposed to play - that's just what you do. The game's got everything - running, screaming, chasing, tagging! And there are...

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Of the Cats and the Uniform Commercial Code

So, Smash and Lily have been getting along pretty well, I think. There's no hissing nowadays, and they do a lot of playing around. They run around the apartment at lighting-quick speeds and wrestle a lot. Lily often initiates the whole thing, and then Smash, who is three times Lily's size, beats Lily into submission. He'll jump on top of her and they'll roll around pawing at each other. Then Smash will lick Lily's head or vice versa. I feel bad that I'm gone so much of the day, but I've been making an effort to spend a few minutes...

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October 13, 2006

I Just Want to Talk to a Person!

So, I got home just now and checked my mail. I had a thing from Charter, my cable company. In fact, I should say "the cable company." It's not like I had a choice. Anyway, I opened up the letter and found a letter saying that my payment for the month hadn't worked because my card was declined or something. Furthermore, my automatic payment that I had set up was now "suspended." I thought to myself: "Now, how the fuck could that happen? I know I've got more than enough money in my account to cover the cable bill. This...

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October 8, 2006

The Repository of All Human Knowledge

I spend so much time on Wikipedia, it's not even funny. I go there ofte to look up something I don't know anything about and, next thing you know, it's 4am. Tonight, I decided to look up Indiana Jones because I saw a story on Yahoo about how George Lucas is planning an animated Star Wars cartoon. At the end of the article, he mentioned the much-discussed fouth Indiana Jones movie. Having grown up in a household that didn't have a VCR with parents that weren't particularly keen to drive an hour to take me to the nearest movie theatre,...

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September 28, 2006

The Twenty-One Point Scale

Physical beauty undeniably exists. Unfortunately, so does phsycial not beauty. That's the way things are, and there's nothing wrong with that. Especially since all beauty is fleeting and meaningless. What's really important, the thing we should really pay attention to, is a person's personality. At times, I may be bewildered by someone's physical accoutrements, but that's a separate thing from thinking someone's a good person. Every time in my life that I've really been attracted to a woman, it was primarily because of their personality rather than because of their looks. Although I've clearly made many mistakes about which women...

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September 26, 2006

Another Night With TV

So, tonight marked the premiere of Heroes, one of the shows I've been looking forward to. I missed the first few minutes, but I saw most of the episode, and it was pretty good. Here's a rundown of what happened (spoiler warning): Several people are discovering that they have super-human abilities. There's a cheerleader who's invulnerable - she sticks her hand in the garbage disposal and it grows right back. There's a kid in Tokyo who believes he can stop time and reasons that he can therefore teleport. There's a kid in New York City who believes that he can...

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September 25, 2006

Fuck You, Charlie

So, I like listening to the random music station, Charlie, on my way to school in the morning. There's something about Charlie's mix of classic rock and so-bad-it's-good 80's music that I find relaxing and non-offensive. If I listen to pretty much any other station, especially the hard-rock station, I find myself getting angrier and angrier at how much the music fucking sucks. I mean, seriously, have you heard the latest Godsmack song? It's bad. Really fucking bad. In any event, I'm listening to Charlie this morning, when the unthinkable happened. At first, I was sure I had misidentified the...

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September 20, 2006

It's Even Worse Than I Thought

As I discussed here, Spanish television is bad. And not just bad in terms of quality or whatever, but bad in terms of being exploitative and pandering. If the American values and decency people think they have something to complain about on Fox, they should take a look at Univision every now and then. As it turns out, the whole thing is even worse than I thought. I found this article on CNN.com today. The show is called Sin Tetas no hay Paraiso, or "Without Breasts, There's no Paradise." Let me quote the synopsis: [The show] revolves around a 17-year...

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Why Can't I be a Kid Now?

I was looking around the internet, completely at random, when I saw the new version of Tickle Me Elmo, the T.M.X. Elmo. Now, I don't know how much I would have liked this toy as a kid, but it got me thinking: toys nowadays are so much more awesome than the toys that were available when I was a kid - and nevermind the toys I actually had as a kid. I mean, look at the multitude of new Transformers toys that are available. These are scale models of real-world cars that turn into foot-tall robots! That's fucking awesome. The...

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September 19, 2006

What the Fuck?

Alright - I don't know what's going on with the blog right now. For some reason, there are some issues with the commenting. There are still several behind-the-scenes issues I'm trying to take care of, as well. It's being worked on. You guys can help me out by trying to comment and letting me know how it goes. Just use the tagboard to let me know if things fuck up. On another note, let me talk about how much I hate people who answer phones for companies. Now, I know the standard complaints and I agree with them all. But...

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September 18, 2006

TV's Warm, Glowing Warming Glow (Back From the Dead!)

A new television season is starting up. Since I've recently acquired cable, I kind of care - for the first time since high school, really. While some people are really excited about the new seasons of Nip/Tuck and The O.C. - Chris, I'm looking at you - I'm not really all that interested in those shows. That's because I hate coming in in the middle of things. I hate starting to watch a movie in the middle, even if it's a movie I've seen a million times, and I'm starting to feel that way about TV shows, too. That leads...

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September 3, 2006

2006 MTV Video Music Awards (Updated!)

For some reason, I woke up yesterday and I was convinced that I was going to have a shitty day. I felt all lonely and shit. But then the universe sort of knocked me around until I realized that I have a large number of extremely high-quality friends. So I'm feeling pretty good today. What that means for you is that you get to read me ranting about something rather than wallowing in self-pity. It has come to my attention that the MTV Video Music Awards were held recently. Now, as far as I'm concerned, the single best VMA performance...

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August 10, 2006

Little Green Bigots?

So, Little Green Footballs is a blog that's been getting a lot of attention lately. It's one of the blogs that helped break the story that the Killian Documents, which were offered as proof that George W. Bush's service in the Texas Army National Guard was less than exemplary on 60 Minutes, were forgeries. More recently, it helped break the story that a picture taken by a Reuters freelance photographer was altered using Photoshop. Given all the attention that blog's been getting, I decided to check it out myself, just to see what was going on over there. What I...

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August 7, 2006

Morning Drive Time

I've talked about liking my job a lot, and I do. But, you know what? At 9:30 in the morning, when I'm running late, I've only had 6.5 hours of sleep, it's Monday, and I've got a shitload of work waiting for me on my desk, I've got very little to look forward to. The few minutes of reflection I get on my drive to work are sacred. They're the time when I get to think about the day, the weekend and, more importantly, what I'm going to eat for lunch. I choose to fill this time with talk radio....

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July 27, 2006

Corporate America Can Suck My Ass!

Oh man. I fucking love seeing those I hate fail. And there's literally nothing I hate more than UPS. Fucking nothing. So, when I heard that their stock price tumbled, I was gleeful. My glee was mitigated somewhat by the fact that they still eared a shitload of money, but, you know, whatever. So, why do I hate UPS so much? I'll fucking tell you. It all started when I placed an order on Amazon.com. The fastest delivery option was UPS. Being impatient as I am, I decided to have my order shipped via UPS. A few days later, I...

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June 5, 2006

You Know What There Aren't Enough Of?

Life-sized, painted, fiberglass cows. I know what you're thiking: "what kind of imbecile would want a stupid life-sized, painted, fiberglass cow?" Yeah, I thought that, too. Fortunately, Madison, Wisconsin, has not gotten a life-sized, painted, fiberglass cow. That's good. Unfortunately, it has gotten 7 billion life-sized, painted, fiberglass cows. Why? Who the fuck knows. Who the fuck knows. I'll tell you what, though, it's a great idea. Because if there's something that a town in Wisconsin needs, it's to increase its reputation for having an affinity for cows. Just in case people forget that we're all about cows here, they'll...

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February 25, 2006

Tito's, Poker, Perkins

'Twas a marquee evening tonight. First, Ryan procured bottles of Tito's vodka. It lived up to the hype as well as could be imagined. It's good, but not the best vodka i've ever had. I still think that's Level, by a mile. We played poker. Somehow, i lost $15. Laurence won, get this, $35. That's thirty-five dollars, US. Each buy-in was $5. That means that Laurence single-handedly took 7 buy ins. Un-fucking-believable. This beats the previous record of most money earned by a single person in a single night. The previous record holder was Cole at $31. Laurence had $20...

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February 21, 2006

Winter Olympics, 2006

So, i don't have cable and, therefore, have not been actually watching the olympics. However, i am reading about them daily and being generally very excited by the whole thing. I think the idea of the olympics is really fucking cool: mortal men competing in a variety of challenges, for no other reason than to see who is the best at, say, sledding down a hill or throwing a rock on ice. It's fucking awesome. So far, my favorite moments have included: That American snowboarder fucking up. She doesn't feel bad, she says, so i don't feel bad for her....

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February 20, 2006

Vodka.

Vodka has long been my favorite liquor. I pretty much love it in all forms: on the rocks, vodka gimlets, vodka tonics, vodka sours. I do prefer dirty gin martinis, but vodka martinis will do in a pinch. This begs the question, of course, of what vodka is my favorite. Well, i've had many vodkas: Grey Goose, Svedka, Stoli's, Finlandia, Skyy, and even Philip's, which is even worse than you'd imagine a cheap, plastic-bottled vodka could be. However, to this day, i have had no better vodka than Level, which was the first bottle of alcohol that was ever opened...

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February 11, 2006

Fuck Everything, We're Doing Five Blades

Well, i will be goddamned. In another amazing sample of life following (hilarious) art, the Gillette company has actually released a fucking razor with five blades. Yeah, five fucking blades. Six, if you count the one on the back of the thing for "precision shaving." The truly amazing thing is that The Onion foresaw this a few years ago in what is, to this day, my favorite Onion article ever. Check it out here. I swear, i would put money on Gillette having been inspired by this article. Here are a few choice excerpts: Would someone tell me how this...

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January 16, 2006

"We Play Everything"?

Ok. We all like Nirvana, the band. That was a good band. Once, i was watching Saturday Night Live, it was an episode from the early 90's. The musical guest was some band called Dee-Light or some such shit. Point is, they sucked - hard. And i thought to myself: is this what music was like before Nirvana? Anyway, Nirvana kicks ass. So, generally, if a radio station plays Nirvana, they're going to get the nod from me. But, ok, what if i told you that, in addition to playing Nirvana, this radio station also played Foo Fighters. Well, fuck,...

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January 4, 2006

"They Can Be a Great People, Kal-El, They Wish to Be. They Only Lack the Light to Show the Way . . ."

So, on June 30th, 2006, Superman Returns will hit theatres. I, as a lifelong Superman fan, am incredibly excited. You should check out the trailer at the official Superman Returns webpage. The trailer really does kick ass. You can also see a bunch of pictures and read lots about the movie here. Now, personally, Christopher Reeve will always be Superman. So, i had mixed feelings about this new guy, Brandon Routh, wearing the cape and tights. However, the first time i saw this picture, i was highly encouraged. That's Superman, i thought. I was so encouraged, in fact, that i...

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