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I hate when people wear t-shirts with clever pop culture references because they’re usually not funny and they become outdated and stale in like a month.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.

Posted under music, video

There’s something about musical prodigies that can cause me to waste an entire work day on Youtube. Today is Friday and I stayed up far past my bedtime last night. That means today is one of those days. I have compiled an assortment of videos for your viewing pleasure.

Today’s theme is Flight of the Bumblebee by Rinsky-Korsakov. There’s a point in every musician’s life when they discover that their fingers (or mouth in the case of wind/brass instruments) are able to move at speeds above human comprehension. Once a piece of music is memorized, the fingers are eventually able to play it as if they were autonomous. That is to say, the musician performs the song unconsciously.

I too have experienced the bliss of whizzing through a series of notes at lightning speed (way faster than they’re supposed to be played) and thinking I was invincible. That was before I saw the following videos.

We’ll start at amazing and work our way up to uber-amazing.

That was Flight of the Bumblebee on a good old fashion piano by a guy named Maksim. I estimate about 1% of the world’s population can do or has done this already. I mean, pianos are pretty common, right?

Let’s take it up a notch.

That was Luis Moreno on electric guitar. I estimate about 0.1% of the world’s population can pull that off. I realize guitars are even more common than pianos, but let’s put the amazingness of this in perspective. I played piano for 5 years and was at the point where I could probably play this piece on piano - although not quite as fast as Maksim did it. I’ve been playing guitar for twice as long and there isn’t a chance in heck that I could even attempt to play the first 2 seconds of Moreno’s version.

Hungry for more? It gets even better.

That was David Childs on the euphonium. I estimate about .00001% of the world’s population could achieve what Childs achieves. Why? Because there can’t be more than 30 euphoniums in the entire world. What is a euphonium?

OK, now get ready to step into the big leagues.

That was Jose Feliciano on acoustic/classical guitar. I know what you’re thinking. Let me explain to you why this is better than you think. 2 reasons. First, did you see at the end how he continued playing notes above the highest frets of the guitar? If you don’t know what a fret is, don’t fret. Just watch for the part at the very end where both of his hands are on the base of the guitar and he’s playing the strings above the hole of the guitar. Yeah, that’s impossible. Second - and this one’s gonna convince you if the first one didn’t - Jose Feliciano is blind. BLIND I TELL YOU! That means he makes those huge jumps of 10+ frets at a time using only his mind.

Seriously though, those videos were nothing compared to this next one. Hold on to your butts.

That was Alexander Dmitriev on accordian. Why is that awesome? Because he could whoop anyone at Guitar Hero. It doesn’t need much more explanation than that.

You might as well have just started reading this post right here, because everything you’ve just seen is meaningless compared to this next video.

That’s Greg Pattillo on flute. That’s right, he just beatboxed Flight of the Bumblebee. All my goals and dreams have just been shattered. I am no longer inspired to be the best at anything ever again.

Since I loved that video so much, here’s one last bonus video because I’m feeling very beneficent and magnanimous since it’s Friday. It’s the same guy doing one of my favorite musical suites: Peter and the Wolf. BEATBOX STYLE.

Posted under beratings, movies

I don’t know what it is with George Lucas and terrible rehashes of once-untarnished film sagas. Everything he touches nowadays turns to dust. If you choose to see a Lucas film, you have chosen poorly. Maybe my brother put it best when he told me “I knew George Lucas had changed forever when he modified the Greedo/Solo dispute for the re-release of Star Wars: Episode 4 and made Greedo the one to shoot first instead of Solo.”

He was right, Lucas has gone incredibly soft… and lame.

They should have buried the series after The Last Crusade. I’m extremely sad to say that Indiana Jones and the Kingom of the Crystal Skull disappointed me more than Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace.

I left work early the first Friday it opened to see it by myself. I love seeing movies by myself because it lets me fully experience the film without any distractions. However, no amount of preparation can prevent the movie itself from distracting me with unbelievable scenes, bad acting, and a terrible plot. Oh no, The Bad section is going to be long…

The Good

There were so few good things about this movie. I can actually list them out - all four of them.

• 1. Shia Labeouf. This guy keeps impressing me. I am officially a Shia fan. I wish I could say he saved the movie.
• 2. Cate Blanchett.
• 3. The Greaser/Jock diner fight.
• 4. The graphics during the alien aircraft launch.

The Bad

I don’t know which was worse, the plot or the acting. Let’s start with the acting since I believe Harrison Ford to be the main reason the first three movies were so good. I think Harrison has lost his touch. He was really good in What Lies Beneath, which is one of the last movies I remember seeing him in. But that was 8 years ago. He looked a lot older and less in control in Indiana Jones 4, and the one-liners, smirks, and panicked fight sequences that we have come to love him for are non-existent. Most of these qualities were instead found in Shia.

The plot didn’t even equal up to The Mummy movies, which I had previously defined as “Indiana Jones knock-offs”. It’s funny - I would venture so far as to say that Indiana Jones 4 is a knock-off of The Mummy.

What really made the first three films memorable, aside from Harrison Ford, was the story. Hunting after supernatural artifacts that, deep down, we believe really exist makes for a great story. The Arc of the Covenant actually existed at some point in time. A magnetic alien skull make of crystal and quartz from outer space did not really exist at some point in time. It could have, I guess. But we don’t know for a fact that it did like we know with the Holy Grail. As far as plot complexity, IJ4 was on par with the first films, but it was the substance that really bothered me. It seemed very manufactured.

The film also lacked the sort of “heart” that the first three had. I don’t know how to describe it - atmosphere, environment, feel… “heart”. This one is tough to explain, and I am not talking about nostalgia. The fight scene on top of the tank near the Canyon of the Crescent Moon. The scene on the blimp when Sean Connery asks Indy what he wants to talk about and he replies “I can’t think of anything”. The fight after the drinking contest in Marian’s bar. When the guy pulls out the huge sword in the market and Indy just shoots him. These are little pieces that make up the heart of the movie. IJ4 lacked these memorable scenes.

I can’t list all the unbelievable scenes in this film. Sure the first three films had some unbelievable scenes, but at least they were done with humor and class. Let me give you an example. In The Last Crusade, 5 Nazis fighting Indy conveniently stand in single file line on top of a tank speeding through the rough desert terrain, and Indy shoots a single bullet from a stolen Nazi gun which penetrates the torsos of all 5 Nazis - killing them instantly. Unbelievable? Yes. Amazing scene? Yes. Why? Because of the expression of wonder on Indy’s face when he looks at the barrel of the gun he just fired, telling us that the movie is aware of the impossibility it just presented us with.

In IJ4, there is at least one scene involving 10+ Russian goons firing fully-automatic weapons directly at Indy from 10 yards away - missing him every single time. Unbelievable? Yes. Amazing Scene? No. Why? The scene takes itself seriously. There is no joke involved.

The Beratings

Acting - 1 berating.
Just as one or two bad actors cannot ruin a film, one or two good actors cannot make a film. Sorry, Shia and Cate.

Plot - 2 beratings.

Inconsistencies - 2 beratings.
It doesn’t even seem like it belongs in the Indiana Jones series. Besides the same actor portraying Indy and the glimpse of the Arc during the warehouse scene, what else is there to convince me this movie deserves the Indiana Jones prefix?

Unbelievable Events - 2 beratings.
I tried not to bring up this scene, but I just have to seeing as how it’s the most unbelievable scene I’ve
ever seen in the history of Hollywood. There is a scene where Indy jumps in a fridge just before a nuclear explosion (which he later pronounces “nucular” LOL), gets launched a mile into the air and lands without the fridge breaking or even opening, tumbles out of the fridge without a scratch on him, and stands there facing the still-in-progress explosion that should be instantly blinding/burning/cancer-izing him. Anyone involved with creating this scene should be ashamed of themselves. Even you, ILM. Just kidding, I can’t stay mad at you ILM.

Schematics - 1 berating
The graphics were good, but I’m more concerned with the what my ears experienced than what my eyes beheld. Remember the Arc theme? Remember the Grail theme? There was no Skull theme. At least not one that stuck out. The first Indiana Jones films presented some of the greatest film scoring I’ve ever heard. This one failed.

8/10 Berating = Watch it purely for spousal points

0/10 Stand in line for the very first showing
1/10 See it the first weekend
2/10 See it at full price
3/10 See it at the Five-Buck-Club
4/10 See it at the dollar-fifty
5/10 See it OnDemand
6/10 Rent it from Blockbuster
7/10 Watch it on TV
>> 8/10 Watch it purely for spousal points
9/10 Never watch it
10/10 Buy it and publicly destroy it

In summary, I have at least learned a valuable lesson from this experience. Do not put your trust in anything but God. Everything else will eventually disappoint. Sorry, I know that’s a sad note to end on… but is it?