Further Proof that Some Children Got Left Behind

So, I've become a Yahoo! Answers addict. It's quite sad, really. I must be on there two hours a day.

Which gives me the opportunity to present you with this:
"WHAT for YU! Why yu SO STOP! Why YU TOLD so STOP! How my it why?

Yu tink fun out in why who when that!"

(link)

How my it why, indeed.

What Up, G-dawg?

So, it's about 11:45 pm, and Kirsten and I are watching a movie. I figure it's about time to hit the hay, right? I mean, I'm not the party animal I used to be.

Wait. I wasn't a party animal. So nevermind.

Anyway, back to the "I figured it was time to hit the hay" part. I told Kirsten my devious plan to (gasp!) stop the movie. She physically attacked me, grabbed the remote, and gave me this glare that told me I'd be lucky to wake up with half a testicle if I tried that again.

So what movie were we watching, you ask?

She's the Man

Happiest I've Been in Years

Rumor has it that J.J. Abrams will be directing the next Star Trek movie, a prequel that will fit in between the crap that was Enterprise (notable only because it was a vehicle for Scott Bakula to not go bankrupt, and the incredibly tight uniforms on pretty actresses) and the original Star Trek series with Shatner.

First off, J.J. Abrams doesn't suck as a writer or director, unlike all of the folks who have tried to come up with a Star Trek script and direct the movies (with the exception of Wrath of Khan and Generations, Star Trek movies have generally been pretty awful). Secondly, this is a franchise that needs a kick in the pants, sort of how James Bond needs Casino Royale to do well or else people will officially stop caring.

Anyway, the best part is that there might be a decent actor in the bunch: Matt Damon.

source

Best. Idea. Ever.

If I do say so myself.

Ladies and gentlemen (though admittedly mostly the gentlemen), I give you my finest idea ever, the culmination of minutes of thought, the Mount Everest on the tortured landscape that is my mind...
The Bikini Barbecue Car Wash.

Men, generally, like girls in bikinis.

Men like cars, and especially like clean glossy cars that show off how much they don't care if women think they're compensating. So, the bikini car wash was born. It's a great fundraiser for cheerleading squads, high school bands, and down-in-the-dumps pornographic film production companies. Admittedly, the audience is a little creepy and frequently consists of beer-swilling tattooed men in pickup trucks, but that's to be expected, I think.

Generally, men also like barbecue. Oddly enough, if you say "Free barbecue!" you'll get a bit of a beer-swilling tattoo-sporting pickup-driving overlap with the bikini car wash crowd.

I was driving down the road the other day and passed a pretty girl (clothed) holding up a sign that said, "BBQ!" on the side of the road.

I came up with two ideas: one, she and her friends could coat my car in barbecue sauce and rinse it off, but that would be stupid. And it would leave me hungry, which would also be stupid.

Or two: The bikini car wash could come with a barbecue pulled-chicken sandwich. Just pull up, shell out your money, and get a car wash, a show, and manfood all at once.

Bonus for the purveyors of said car wash: Wet-naps are an extra $5.

On Religion

I was raised Quaker, but I have to admit that rather than getting more religious/conservative/libertarian in my views (as many people do), I've become far more atheistic.

The idea that people believe any one religious text over another, and are willing to go to war over it, and would be willing to kill over it to me is so phenomenally amazing that it's really worth studying.

I don't understand why any one religious text is right...because that same religious text says so? That's like looking at a bottle of ketchup that has "Best Ketchup in the World!" printed on it without any corroborating evidence, and saying to yourself, "Well, it's on the bottle, it must be true!"

I mean, who's to say the Olympians didn't have it right? Or the Norsemen (I'm a big fan of Loki the trickster, myself - I get the impression he's quite real and messing with us today). Or the Muslims? Or the Jews, saying, "Sure, that carpenter was a nice fellow, but not so much in the way of Messiah?"

Every religion believes that it is right, that it is the One True Path to Wherever We Go When We Die. Almost every religion has a stated willingness to kill for this belief. And even in those religions where pacifism is the name of the game, there are still extremists who are willing to kill for their religion in direct conflict with their own teachings.

I don't know for sure that there is no God, but I also don't know for sure that there isn't. I'm not a total atheist - perhaps some part of me holds out hope that some higher-plane being is going to rescue mankind from all the stupid shit we put ourselves through, and the even dumber shit we put other people through.

But I will say this much - I am totally convinced, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that not one of us has got it right yet. We've had a hundred thousand years to figure out the way the world came to be, the way it works, and how we ought to behave to our fellow man. And I look at Israel, Gaza, Lebanon, Mexico, and Washington DC and realize we haven't even begun to come to grips with any of it.

If there is a God, He's either laughing His ass off, or weeping. And either way, we're still idiots.

I am a Tubby Bitch

No other way to put it, really.

Last week, Kirsten and I, who had been wishy-washing about whether or not to have Kirsten join a health club so that she could work out between shifts, took the plunge and joined Bally's Total Fitness (or whatever they're called now) in Clayton. The price is a little enh, but workable into our budgets, I think.

Anyway, part of the deal with this thing was that we would get one free hour with a personal trainer. I figured I'd get Hans und Franz, und zey'd tell me vhat a little guhrly mahn I am und zat zey need to pump *clap* me up.

I actually got a dude named Ryan, who's about 5'8" tall and weighs 220 pounds or so. His goal, as he told me, was to lose weight down to 200 and get his body fat down under 6 percent. Ryan played high school football, wrestled, and did some other sport that I didn't catch.

In high school, I played chess. And got winded doing it.

Anyway, Ryan starts me out on this one-hour workout doodad, and queries, "How would you rate yourself, fitness-wise, on a scale of 1 to 10?" I thought about it, and said quite confidently that I was a four. Not too out-of-shape to make it up the stairs, I figured, but certainly not professional athlete-quality either.

Ha, ha, ha.

I lasted fourteen minutes with this guy. FOURTEEN FREAKING MINUTES. And it's not like we were doing anything that hard, either. Pushups, high lifts, some weird-ass squats involving inflatable balls; you know, simple stuff. The toe-touch prancing made me look like a moron, but whatever. It's not like I go to gyms to pick up chicks. So nothing fancy, but the fact that I couldn't last but 14 minutes of what Ryan called "nothing hard" is embarrasing. Seriously, I made a fucking fool out of myself.

I don't know that I've ever been embarrased by my body before - it's like I suddenly became 2002-era Anna Nicole Smith, just without the alcoholism and depression, and without any warning. Like I said, I never figured I was going to run any marathons, but I never thought I was out of shape, either. Guess I proved me wrong, eh?

I've got a follow-up workout with Ryan scheduled for next Wednesday. Let's hope I can make it, oh, 20 minutes this time.

Real Men of Genius

All of them.

http://diis.net/article.php?story=budlight.

Go to "Paranoid of the ocean guy." By far my favorite.

The One With the Pirates

Some years ago, an episode of Friends discussed "lists," those handy-dandy little groupings of famous people that someone in a relationship could freely sleep with, should the opportunity arise. Lists are supposed to be about 5 people long, if I recall correctly, should only contain famous people, and are allowed to be fluid - that is, someone goes on the list, someone else goes off.

Ross had his laminated, which apparently was a joke.

Anyway, Kirsten and I discussed our lists a few times over the past years, and I remember an early discussion centered on her list, and the total lack of porn-star girls on it. But I guess it's her list, and it's her call. There were the standard guys on it for the time, of course: Orlando Bloom, Michael Vartan, Viggo Mortensen ("But only if he's dark and scruffy, not like in Hidalgo!"), and so on and so forth.

Today, Pirates of the Carribean: Return for Profits comes out, and I can just imagine Kirsten's list now:

• Johnny Depp


• Orlando Bloom


• Jorlandy Dloopp


• Viggo Mortensen ("But only if he's dark and scruffy!")


• Larry Walker

Fair enough. I happen to think strange Norwegian-sounding amalgamations of actors are attractive, and I too love bald married Canadian men. The real human beings on the list, though...I dunno.

As for my list? It's been pretty fluid over the years. Britney Spears was on the list, then she got knocked off by getting married in Vegas, then she got back on when I heard what she did on her "wedding night," then she got knocked off again by dating Kevin fucking Federline. Honestly - KFed?!

Christina Aguilera was on it, but then it turns out she's kind of a bitch. So off she goes.

Lindsay Lohan was on it, then it turns out she's definitely a bitch, she's an alcoholic, she's possibly a coke addict, she's got an eating disorder, AND she slept with Wilmer Valderrama. Almost as bad as getting married to KFed.

Jesus, Brit, what the hell were you thinking?

Anyway, I have no idea who's left out there. I guess I'll have to go with the old standby: Bai Ling.

For Those of Us Cursed With Windows

Windows XP bothers me, because it has a tendency to get sluggish with age - this despite a lack of reasonable explanations for same. Mind you, it's still a million times better than 95/98, but what can you do?

Anyway, I picked up this link from one of the linkdump sites I frequent:
http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=1590

Not sure what half of that is, but it's got 99 tips for speeding up WinXP. I should be able to use at least one.

Happy Fourth of July!

From the desk of Kim Jong-Il:
Greetings President Bush,
I hope that this day finds you poorly. Your fat and lazy American celebration is a rotten one, I hope. The proletariats do not celebrate when they are enlightened, for they know that true celebration comes in working for the common interest.

The fact that we have no gasoline and operate nearly entirely by manual labor has nothing to do with the lack of celebrations.

Today, I assume, your uneducated and hopeless masses are sunning themselves on some of your "beautiful" beaches.

The great people of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea are working today, as they do every year, rather than dirtying themselves with sand.

The fact that our beaches are fenced off so that they do not foolishly attempt to swim across the border into that treacherous dogland to our South, those fools who also call themselves Korea, has nothing to do with the lack of beachtime.

Today we launched three rockets, two of which splashed harmlessly into the sea, and one of which got your panties into a bunch. We have managed to embolden your political opponents by doing nothing but blow up our own rocket 35 seconds into its maiden voyage.

The fact that it was supposed to destroy your city of Seattle and instead sprinkled glorious Pyongyang with plutonium and mustard gas has nothing to do with it.

Your people are ignorant of historical inevitabilities, sexually promiscuous, fat, and lazy.

The fact that I would love to be all of those things has nothing to do with it.

Rot in hell,
Jong-il.

PS: Loved your mom's cheesecake. Can the missus borrow the recipe?