Our friend Miles has his own blog!

Friend of the site (and Chiefs fan) Miles has his own blog now, titled 'I Find Your Lack of Faith Disturbing'. As of right now, he is in Europe, and has been posting regular updates and tons of pictures. Go check it out when you have a minute.

Lord Bling's Oscar follow-up

So I ended up getting six right out of eight on my major Oscar category picks. Typically, this is how it works for me. I kick ass on the major categories, and then I get my ass handed to me on the secondary ones (which is why I don't even bother to post them!). Overall, I had 12 right out of 24. Not great, but considering I've been out of the industry for two years now, I'll take it. Plus, it was a tough year to pick (lots of indies). I mean, who picked Marion Cotillard to win Best Actress? Besides Viking and his l33t combos, that is. Dude, I can save you the trouble of posting by saying it for you: 'How do u like my balls in ur face, dumbass?'.

So, how did you do?

P.S. Big ups to Jon Stewart, or whomever it was that made the decision to give Marketa Irglova the chance to come back out after the break and speak. Glen Hansard spoke first, and then the orchestra started playing early and they cut the microphone off (they had 30 seconds, according to my estimate). It's not like Glen rambled or anything...

Here's a song I bet you haven't heard in about ten years...

Thanks to Wikipedia, I learned that Danny Carey and Maynard James Keenan were both in this band at one point. Danny played drums on this song, and Maynard sang the falsetto pigs voice parts too.

"Child-Man in the Promised Land?"

I just read something that was dripping with stereotypes and half-baked opinions about single men today versus forty years ago, and I wanted to share it with you all. The article is located HERE, so go there, give it a read (it'll only take a couple of minutes), and then hop on back over and let us know what you think in the comment section.

The article in question begins by implying that the average 26-year-old male in the sixties was married with children, owned a house, et. al., and the average 26-year-old male nowadays is single, lives in an apartment with his buddies, and whores around. Further down the article, a census stat is cherry-picked to prove her point. Gee, how scientific! It sounded more to me like the author had a bad experience on a blind date, and decided to take it out on an entire generation of men.

Multiple facts have been lost or wasted on the author. The 'traditional' roles of men and women has changed DRASTICALLY in the West in the last 40 years. Does she want to be barefoot and pregnant, chained to the stove in the kitchen? Also, the rise and improvement of technology has had a profound effect on the amount of free time we have. We can now work smarter, not harder or longer, and our standard of living has increased tenfold. The author makes multiple references to technology in her article, but only infers that it's all used for entertainment. How much time does e-mail and MS Office save us in the workplace?

My biggest problem with the article is the assumptions that are made. It's similar to the argument the anti-video game lobby makes about violent games and its influence on people's views of the world. And yet, they forget that violence is already part of human nature. Of course, I could name thousands of examples, but I'll just go back a long fucking time ago and say, 'Did Cain play Grand Theft Auto?' No one knew back then knew what the fuck an 'auto' was, much less a video game.

My point is, just as there have always been violent crimes, there will always be bachelors. The increase of leisure time due to improvements in technology isn't going to change that. The Rat Pack existed long before Pong. If they were alive and thriving in this decade, would they be spending less time whoring and boozing around, and more time on Xbox Live?

Biofuels are worse than regular gas?

Wired magazine has a profile of two research articles published in yesterday's issue of Science that highlights the reality of the amount of greenhouse gases created by the entire process of creating biofuels. Corn-based ethanol would DOUBLE the greenhouse gas emissions over the next 30 years, while switch-grass, which even President Bush has publicly endorsed, would cause a 50% increase in greenhouse gases compared to regular gasoline. That's what scientists like me call a Type III statistical error or "Fuck, the effect was exactly the opposite of our hypothesis."

What will be interesting is how the Presidential candidates handle the news. All three (McCain, Obama, and Clinton) have made biofuels a cornerstone of their Energy Independance (Republican) and Environmental (Democrat) plans. Isn't it funny how the parties use different terms to describe the same policies? We'll see if anything, including the media's coverage, public's perception or candidates' stances change based on actual science. If I had to guess, I'd put money on the climate changing in hell before any of the above actually occurred.

The Omaha Children's Hospital is trying to put Lord Bling out of a job

Ryan, did they study you in this 'research?' Did you remind them that you were born with a meat cleaver in one hand, and a bottle of scotch in the other?

I won't spend a lot of time proselytizing on this subject. Obviously, I not only play a lot of video games; they also put food on my table. So, you should already know where I stand. Fortunately, the article I linked to mentions that parents need to be more involved, and I couldn't agree more. The government has no business intervening here, because no politician can tell you how to keep your child entertained. However, these little 'studies' keep adding up in the media. What I'd like to know is, why do we never get to see who funds the research? The PMRC?

I hope that people eventually come around on this topic. Spending your free time doing nothing but locking yourself in a room and doing one thing over and over again is anti-social behavior, and can change the way someone looks at the outside world. But I don't think people are going to come around any time soon. At least, it won't happen until something worse takes people's minds off of it. It worked for books, movies, and television. Will text messaging be next? ROFL OMG BRB!

Take an active role in your child's life, or else the government might do it for you.

Good riddance, douche nozzle!

So Mitt Romney threw in the towel today. Let me be one of the first to say, 'Good riddance, douche nozzle!' Especially when things like this come out of your schlong-holster:

"In this time of war, I simply cannot let my campaign be a part of aiding a surrender to terror."

Did we time travel to 2004? I guess someone forgot to tell him that it's 2008, and on the list of priorities in this country, it's the economy, STUPID. But according to Mr. Faith of His Fathers, if Obama or Clinton get elected, we'll all be struck again? Thanks for that nugget of wisdom, Mitt Cheney. Gee, I can't WAIT for the presidential debates now, especially since McCain's only real strength he can play up to the neo-cons is his War Hawk track record. All aboard the Fear Mongering Train!

Am I the only one who's sick and fucking tired of this shit? The world isn't black and white, and politicians who dumb things down to this level have no business representing us in Washington.

Who elected these idiot fucks? Oh right, we did

So, it's Friday today, and I am doing what I usually do on Friday afternoons at work, which is read ESPN.com. While doing so, I noticed this article that Senator Arlen "Spooky" Specter from Pennsylvania wants Congress to look into the destruction of videotapes related to the New England Patriots "spygate" scandal, in which the Pats took survaillance of other teams' coaching signals to give them an advantage. The NFL punished the Patriots, and no one really gives a crap. Except apparently Senator Specter who said:

"I do believe that it is a matter of importance. It's not going to displace the stimulus package or the Iraq war, but I think the integrity of football is very important, and I think the National Football League has a special duty to the American people -- and further the Congress -- because they have an antitrust exemption."

Are you fucking kidding me? More than 10 million children in this country do not have health insurance, and this shit head is worried about how the NFL handles one team videotaping another? Is this guy for real?

The entire situation with Senator Mitchell and steroids in baseball was bad enough. I couldn't care less if baseball players use steroids and HGH. People who care about this have their heads up their asses, as we have SERIOUS FUCKING problems, like wars, crime, and people dieing of health conditions because they can't afford treatment. And we're worried about the integrity of professional sports? I think we should be more worried about our collective priorities, when our Congress has nothing better to do than worry about what's happening on SportsCenter.

Congress is nothing to improve education, nothing to improve healthcare, nothing to fight terrorism. Thank God someone's thinking about the steroid problem in baseball, and what the New England Patriots are doing with that video camera.