The Gimcrack Miscellany

Posted under current events, religion, video

At least, that’s what they think. The Westboro Baptist Church is protesting across from the convention center, which is where the Southern Baptist Convention is being held this week. They’re the ones with the God Hates Fags website.

I saw them on my way to work this morning. There’s even a little kid out there holding a sign that says “Your Pastor Is A Whore”. I’m really just amazed at how they have managed to hate everyone in the world. Here is a list of people they hate: homosexuals, Catholics, Muslims, Jews, Chinese, Canadians, Mexicans, Swedes, Irish, British, and Americans. Now, the WBC, which calls itself Baptist, hates Southern Baptists.

I just think the WBC is a good case study for people who are trying to grow their church and reach out to people. They’ve got it going on, in my opinion, and I think in the end it will work.

I have one more thought about these picketers. I noticed that there were about 6 protesters and about 9 police officers standing behind them, making sure no one throws a molotov cocktail directly at their eyes and faces. Do you realize how much of a waste of resources this is? There are 9 police officers, earning their well deserved $28k per year, who have been effectively incapacitated and removed from the system in order to make sure no one kills these people.

I guarantee you a crime will be committed against a person somewhere out there today that would not have happened if those extra 9 cops were on patrol.

Of course, there will also be 9 less speeding tickets given out. Maybe the WBC isn’t so bad after all…

Check out this short preview clip of a BBC documentary called The Most Hated Family In America:

“Fags eat feces. That’s a fact, hon.” REALLY? Wow.

Here’s the whole documentary:

Posted under gimcrackery, humor, l33t, photos

…but sometimes cynicism equals hilarity.

Here is some partly cynical, mostly hysterical junk I found on the web over the past couple days. First we’ll start with my favorite t-shirt designs from Busted Tees (I wouldn’t waste my time on that site if I were you). If you don’t understand them all, you must not spend 8 hours a day on the interwebs like me. That is probably a good thing.

I hate when people wear t-shirts with clever pop culture references because they’re usually not funny and they become outdated and stale in like a month. So basically I found the following fresh gems in a sea of moldy cliches.

Let’s see, there are 9 of these, so how about we go least funny to most funny? That’s fun because then I get to force my opinion upon you.

I’ve seen this before but I forgot how funny that guy looks.

I need to wear this shirt because every time I try to make fun of someone I make an even dumber mistake myself.

It’s funny because the hat loosely resembles the shape of Canada. Clever.

Same reason as the previous one, except the word “beard” is slightly funnier than the word “hat”.

I can see never forgetting William Wallace, MLK Jr., or Mother Theresa. But dinosaurs didn’t really teach us any lessons and weren’t really valiant or courageous. So never forgetting them is absurdly funny!

So very true. LOL!

If you don’t get this, I’m sorry. If you do, you’re welcome. I’ll let you try to find out for yourself what hilarious new viral video this is referring to.

Gah! The Shredder!

The poor guy is completely square. And they pointed it out!

Alright, now that we’ve properly offended Mexicans, Canadians, Wyomingites, and fans of Bill O’Reilly, we’ll proceed to the REALLY funny stuff. I’m serious, the second half of this post is way more funny than the first half. Ever seen DEmotivational posters? You can see a bunch of them at despair.com which are all SFW. I got most of the following demotivationals from other NSFW sites which I won’t list here.

Here is cynicism at its finest, and most hilarious. Most of these speak for themselves and require no commentary from the peanut gallery, so I’ll spare you. There’s 12 of ‘em, ranked pretty funny to really funny.

Finally, someone so eloquently put into words why I don’t want to use Linux!

OK, these are starting to veer from the “motivational poster” motif to the “make fun of people” motif, but that’s funny too. This picture can’t be real! What’s sad is I sometimes willingly go to Broad Ripple on Friday nights and surround myself with tools just like these. Does that make me a tool?

Anyway, hilarious!

These last few are by far the funniest. We’re moving away from dumb people and into the realm of awesome people. It’s funny for the same reason Chuck Norris jokes are funny.

This was the funniest to me by far. Some poor guy tries to make a demotivational poster about harpoons: “HARPOONS - Man Them” (not sure why that’s funny, but it doesn’t matter). Little did he know he was about to spark a bitter war of ignorance amongst his fellow demotivators. The second guy comes along with a good point: “FAIL - Missiles are NOT harpoons.” That’s already a funny demotivational right there.

But wait! Here comes the third guy, obviously a navy veteran, to correct the second guy with his intellect and wit! “I know even more than the both of you” he says. “It’s a Harpoon Missile, duh.” Haha! LOL! Even funnier! But it’s not over…

Guy #4 gets the last laugh. He gloriously rips apart the third guy’s grammar. Brilliant! “Double” only has one “B”! I love it! I bet he had like 6 people proof read it to make sure it was completely correct so he wouldn’t get ripped in yet another recursively hilarious picture. I guess I could get him for not putting the “B” at the end of his sentence in quotations, but that would be the pot calling the kettle black, so I’ll abstain.

Posted under blogging, sports

I was reading this post about salt tablets taken during long distance running on this blog about running and started thinking to myself, “why do you need salt if you run for a long distance?” This prompted me to click on the website for S!Caps where I kept seeing the words like sodium, potassium, and phosphate, which all seemed to be underneath the umbrella of electrolytes. Isn’t an electrolyte just a gimmick to get us to buy Gatorade? Isn’t the BEST drink just pure water? Don’t we just like sports drinks because they taste better than water?

I consulted The Oracle to see what indeed an electrolyte was, if our bodies really needed them, and, if so, where we could get more of them when we’re running out. If you are a person who runs marathons you already know all of this. If you are a person who prefers Seinfeld marathons while eating peanut butter out of the jar with a large serving spoon, this can actually be interesting.

The Oracle told me that both muscle tissue and neurons are considered electric tissues, and that these tissues are activated by electrolyte activity. Muscle contraction is dependent on calcium, sodium, and potassium, which are all ions that make up an electrically conductive medium, or an electrolyte. What I get out of that is, without electrolytes our muscles can’t form movements and our neurons can’t form thoughts. OK, so we definitely need them.

Do we lose them when we exercise? Not normally. But if we participate in such activities as Ironman events or ultramarathons we do, or else we risk water intoxication - also called water poisoning or overhydration. What? Water intoxication? Why didn’t anyone tell me!

No, it’s not what you think. I didn’t say you could get drunk from water. I said you could be poisoned to death and explode. There’s a difference. It happens if you drink huge amounts of water to make up for lost fluids (as you should do if you are an Ironman-er) without also replacing your supply of electrolytes. It turns out that during extended periods of exercise, if you consume a lot of water to make up for lost fluids, you can get water intoxication due to lack of elecrolytes.

So, is Gatorade really good during exercise? Yes. Are S!Caps even better? Absolutely. But since you don’t lose a significant amount of electrolytes unless you run around the world twice in one day, the normal person doesn’t have to worry about it. The best thing for you would be plain old water. So what was the point of me telling you all this if you’re never going to run a marathon in your life? Just in case you decide to get in a water drinking contest and die.

I guess it’s true what they say: too much of anything will kill you. Except LOLcats that is.