Time is on our side

Sports Illustrated, "The Pervert's ESPN", reports that all of those pain-in-the-ass clock rules (sometimes used rather craftily) from last year are already a thing of the past:

There are a whole bunch of smiling faces in coaches offices around the country today. Those widely despised game-clock changes the NCAA instituted last year -- the changes that chopped off an average of 14 plays per game, that Texas Tech coach Mike Leach called "stupid" and Michigan coach Lloyd Carr called "the worst rule in the past 50 years" -- are all but gone.

The NCAA Football Rules Committee, which convened this week in Albuquerque, N.M., announced a proposal Wednesday to revert to 2005 standards: No more starting the clock when a ball is kicked or on a change of possession. No more teams having to burn a timeout in the final minutes before they even run a play. No more intentionally lining up offsides on a kickoff to run the clock out as Wisconsin's Bret Bielema did against Penn State last year.

"The changes we made last year, overall, did not have a positive effect on college football at all levels," said committee chair Michael Clark, the head coach at Division III Bridgewater (Va.) College.

All in all, great news for college football as a whole, but the new rules for kickoffs could be disastrous for the Wildcats, as we often put the 'special' in 'special teams'.

Now, if only something could be done about permanently crippling the young men that sacrifice their bodies for the sport, we'd be all set.

SHIT.

Not that I'm an alarmist, but a drop in 500 points in one day just can't be good. Full story here.

NASA has a plan

In light of Lisa Nowak going mildly batshit last week, Newsweek obtained NASA's plan for dealing with 'unstable astronauts'. You know, just in case an astronaut flips out and tries to "open a hatch and kill everyone aboard". Thank God we have NASA working on this, because there is no chance in hell you or I or any other non-rocket-scientist could have come up with this:

1. Tie them up with duct tape.
2. If necessary, inject them with horse tranquilizers.

It's brilliant! How did they think of that! Wait, who are we kidding? They came up with WD-40 and Tang, this is child's play in comparison.

Read the entire story here, courtesy (of course) of those crack reporters at CNN. Their best pre-story bullet point, hands down, is "a gun would not be used; a bullet could pierce a spaceship and kill everyone", which anyone that's seen pretty much any space-movie, "Futurama", or US Marshalls could tell you anyway.

There is an extra provision, though, that if the unstable astronaut is actually a malfunctioning homicidal robot, you can always just beat the hell out of it with a fire extinguisher until it leaks milk and its head falls off. It worked for Sigourney Weaver.

Ian Holm hasn't had this much trouble pouring milk since he was three.

Titles of posts I have yet to write

1. "Why I refuse to write about celebutards"
2. "If I did write about celebutards, my next post would be about that crazy bald broad"
3. "The joy of finding holes in your underwear"
4. "The Florida judge's absurd decision to entrust the remains of Anna Nicole Smith to her infant daughter instead of her mother isn't surprising given the 2000 presidential election"
5. "Goddamit, why can't the Bears make their Super Bowl coach higher-paid than at least one other head coach? Seriously, last year Lovie made less than Art fucking 'Poker Face' Shell"
6. "I actually made time to sit down and watch 'The 1/2 Hour News Hour' and here is why it sucks huge amounts of ass"
7. "After much thought and the study of countless Red Skelton skits and Johnny Carson monologues, I've determined exactly what humor is comprised of, and in turn why Carlos Mencia, Larry the Cable Guy and 'Two and A Half Men' aren't funny"
8. "Butter pecan ice cream is vastly underrated"
9. "If I could slap any historical figure in the face and get away with it, I could make a pretty decent case for William Howard Taft"
10. "Five reasons I believe that John Madden has actually been dead since 1998"

At the risk of just reposting stories from CNN

You know you're better off for reading this story, reprinted from CNN here.

Police: U.S. seniors fight off muggers, killing one

SAN JOSE, Costa Rica (AP) -- A tour group of U.S. senior citizens fought off a band of muggers in eastern Costa Rica, sending two of the assailants fleeing and killing a third, police said Thursday.

One of the tourists -- a retired U.S. serviceman whom officials estimated was in his 70s -- allegedly put Warner Segura in a headlock and broke his clavicle after the 20-year-old and two other men armed with a knife and gun held up their tour bus Wednesday, said Luis Hernandez, the police chief of Limon, 80 miles east of San Jose.

The Americans had arrived in Limon on the Carnival Cruise Lines ship Carnival Liberty.

"It was a group of 12 senior citizens from the United States who were going to spend a few hours in the area, but their tour bus entered a dangerous sector known as Cieneguita", Hernandez said.

The tourists drove Segura to the local Red Cross branch, but he was declared dead, Hernandez said. He declined to give the names or hometowns of the tourists.

The Red Cross also treated one of the tourists for an anxiety attack, Hernandez said.

Costa Rican authorities said they did not plan to file charges against the tourists, who left on their cruise ship after the incident.

"They were in their right to defend themselves after being held up," Hernandez said.

Hernandez said Segura had previous charges against him for assaults.

I'll inherit millions provided I'm not dead!

Every now and again, thanks to the power of The Internet Tubes, we've all been privy to the trust of deposed African dignitaries, who need to transfer their millions of dollars to the US, and, for the use of your own personal bank account and social security number, will pay you $1,000,000.00. Of course, this is nonsense. Realistically, the vig on this type of transaction will only net you about $150,000.00.

In all seriousness, this is merely a variation of the very old-school con game, the Spanish Prisoner (also a pretty decent David Mamet movie with Campbell Scott and Steve Martin). In the modern variation, instead of giving money to an imprisoned (and wrongly identified) dignitary in exchange for their daughter, banking information is provided in exchange for a hefty gift - I've been offered as much as six million dollars on a bait email, but I've never responded.

However, there are groups that bait these scammers in the hopes that by tying up their resources, they can prevent innocent people being duped, and at the same time, get some pretty hilarious pictures. After all, how else can you prove you're a real live dignitary than by posing with a food item or sign as your American contact requests?

Anyhow, today I received quite the notice. In the interest of hilarity I'll post it pretty much as I got it (boldface is mine for emphasis):

Attn: Beneficiary

This is to inform you that the Bank For International Settlement empowered by Central Bank Of AFRICA, has mandated me to contact all the beneficiary who has in one way or the order fail by paying some huge sum of money to AFRICA in other to get their Inheritance or Contract money/fund to know avail. Now I want to inform you that 12 names has been writing out for payment release which includes your name as you can see the other 11 below, but some people has come forth to lay claim on your behalf stating your late and that they are the beneficiary whom your payment should be made to...
...Please respond to the official email below or call the below phone number if possible because we want to know if this information is true before we proceed to pay them and these will be done as soon as we do not hear from you that means we will assume that truly you are dead.
Mr. Moris Smith
AUDIT PAYMASTER GENERAL
BANK FOR INTERNATIONAL SETTLEMENT
COTONOU BRANCH. BENIN REPUBLIC
3F,NO.115, SEC3 MIN SHENG E RD
COTONOU BRANCH.
REPUBLIC OF BENIN

I can't tell you how tempted I am to email back and tell them I am, in fact, dead, and they should disperse the money to my beneficiaries. The only drawback is by responding my email would be added to a list of 'mugus', meaning I'm quite the rube.

If I was a scambaiter, though, I think what I would do is respond by saying that I, me, am actually dead, but that I'm the sole heir, and the other people coming forward are liars. It's great that this inheritance is coming, because I run a small church in rural Rhode Island (get it?) that sure could use the support, and wouldn't you send our congregation a picture of you partaking in our rituals? Great. That makes me feel much better about giving you my bank routing number, my passport, social security card, and a copy of my birth certificate - it's all in the mail! Send that cash-money soon! Rural Rhode Island depends on it!

Congrats, CNN - you've redeemed yourselves

Just in case the link ever dies, I'm posting this very sad yet darkly humorous story here in its entirety:

Gunman kills 2 clowns in Colombian circus
Story Highlights
• Unidentified gunman shoots two clowns before audience at Circo del Sol de Cali
• One clown was killed instantly, and the second died the next day
• Police probe motive behind killings in small Colombian town near Venezuela

BOGOTA, Colombia (Reuters) -- Two clowns were shot and killed by an unidentified gunman during their performance at a traveling circus in the eastern Colombian town of Cucuta, police said Wednesday.

The gunman burst into the Circo del Sol de Cali on Monday night and shot the clowns in front of an audience of 20 to 50 people, local police chief Jose Humberto Henao told Reuters.

One of the clowns was killed instantly, and the second died the next day in hospital.

"The killings had nothing to do with the show the victims were performing at the time of the incident," Henao said in a telephone interview. "We are investigating the motive."

With an entrance fee of under 50 cents, Circo del Sol de Cali attracts mostly poor Colombians. It pitched its tents in Cucuta, near the border with Venezuela, earlier this month.

"The clowns came out to give their show, and then this guy came out shooting them," one audience member told local television. "It was terrible."

Oh, CNN. You all deserve a cookie.

Wail of the Chief

So long as I've been a member of the Big Ten, I've been aware of the Chief Illiniwek controversy that's been boiling since before I was born. Tonight, ironically Ash Wednesday, the Chief will be laid to rest, dancing his authentic tribal dance - authentic in the same way John Ford movies accurately portray our country's oldest inhabitants - for the last time. Courtesy of ESPN Page 2's Bomani Jones:

Wednesday night's game between Illinois and Michigan at Assembly Hall in Champaign will be emotional for some. Halftime will be the last time that Chief Illiniwek will dance as the the Fighting Illini's official mascot.

Dan Mahoney, who portrays Chief Illiniwek, believes "[Tonight] is going to be very tough for a lot of people."

Ahhh, but those people should keep their eyes on the bright side -- at last, Illinois will move into the 21st century!

If Mahoney only knew how wonderful things are in the present. Does he know that in the 21st century, people are able to connect to the Internet without having to plug cords into their computers? Shoot, pretty soon cars might even pop up on campus that use gas and electricity and get about 60 miles to the gallon! And wait until he and his fellow Illini find out about this HDTV thing. They'll be able to read the players' tattoos without getting courtside seats!

But wow, it's a good thing no one will see Chief Illiniwek in HD after Wednesday. I'd imagine that crystal clarity would make it obvious what Chief Illiniwek often was -- a white kid dressed in feathers and using a stereotype of Native Americans in the name of entertainment.

Save the arguments that Illiniwek was intended to honor the state of Illinois' Native American heritage for someone dumb enough to believe them. As Ron Froman, the former chief of the Peoria Tribe of Indians of Oklahoma (the closest living descendants of the Illiniwek Confederacy), said, "I don't think [Chief Illiniwek] was intended to support us, because, they ran [us] out of Illinois."

Finally, Chief Illiniwek has been run out of the University of Illinois. Welcome to the present.

And how! Also, TCMcG called out U of I here, pretty much nailing it right on the scalped head.

Farewell, dear Chief - if only you weren't on the same level of PC as blackface, we could be privy to your lameness for generations to come.

UPDATE: It just occurred to me that the U of I is finally following in Northwestern's footsteps, as in 1924 we changed our mascot from 'The Fighting Methodists' to 'The Wildcats', as the previous name was disrespectful to the Methodists who secured the land on which Northwestern currently rests with the blood and sacrifice of good real estate investment. With the departure of Chief, the last remaining non-PC mascot will be Bob Jones University's Pimped Out Jesus.

Holy shit, now THAT'S journalism!

Got to give it to CNN for gracing their front page with a breaking story that any second-grader could tell you: in the 'Story Highlights' box, CNN declares,

"Venus lacks water in its atmosphere, Mercury has no atmosphere"

The rest of the story (here) is actually mildly interesting, but useless unless you happen to be a professional astronomer or an aspiring Captain Kirk.

IMPORTANT SCROTAL UPDATES

The human brain is a marvelous thing - from the amount of sheer information it can store, to the power with which it can process data while maintaining necessary body functions, your mind is a miraculous tool with enormous potential.

For the past twenty-four hours, mine has been busy trying to remember the children's book where a girl is subject to a classmate exposing himself, because I want to reference it in a blog post about the word 'scrotum'.

Sadly, after much reflection, an exhaustive search using Google Books, and a bizarre dream wherein I couldn't fully enjoy the commencement address delivered by Stephen Colbert, which had been organized by my college roommate Bill, because I had a two-inch laceration from the corner of my mouth to the middle of my cheek (not sure why or how), I've come up a little short. Google Books is quite a powerful program, but a search for the term "a stick or something" yielded no conclusive results. A variation on "a stick or something", "some kind of stick", yielded more pish-posh. I recalled that at the end of the paragraph, after the girl runs away, she says that she doesn't know why she said "a stick or something" because "I knew what that was". A search for that particular phrase brought up a surprising amount of LGBT literature, which, if that's what this book had been, would have been wholly inappropriate for classroom reading material in a middle school.

Thinking it was time to try another angle, as I didn't like where this Googling was taking me, especially at work during lunch, I tried to search for children's books about WWII and boats. And I found what I was looking for: Lois Lowry's (Newberry Medal-winning, I might add) Number the Stars, which does in fact tell a story about a young girl escaping WWII Europe in a boat. A Google Book search of the text for the phrase "a stick or something", or even the word "stick", came up with bumpkus. So, either Google does not have the entire book stored and searchable online, or I've permanently tarnished Lois Lowry's work with a reference that isn't actually there.

In other related news, I tried being a wise-ass on the New York Times website by leaving a comment on the 'scrotum story' story. A riff on what I previously posted here, I submitted my comment as "My sole objection is that readers in the target age are at an ideal height to punch me there." It seems that some silver-spoon web moderator in NYC didn't think my comment was on-topic enough to be added to the huge thread. There's a silver lining to every cloud though, because one of the funniest things I have EVER seen associated with the New York Times can be read in that thread here: the story makes me laugh not because of the word, but because this kid was so frank.

Anyhow, now we can sort of lay that one to rest. If you'll excuse me, I'm going to go to the bathroom because my scrotum is itchy, I need to scratch it, then wash my hands.

So long as we're just linking elsewhere

Outrage over the Newbery Medal-winning children's book "The Higher Power of Lucky" by Susan Patron as the word "scrotum" appears on the first page. Unacceptable. I remember some book I had to read in middle school where a young female character described being in a dark grotto with the crazy guy in her grade (this was maybe in pre-WWII Germany?) and "a stick or something" was sticking out of his pants. Clearly this scarred me forever, as to this day I can only refer to that part of the anatomy as "a stick or something". I think this girl may have escaped Germany to Norway on a boat, where odd German kids didn't whip it out in grottoes, so I guess everything turned out well for her.

If nothing else, I don't think young kids should know about this particular body part so long as they're at the ideal height to punch me there when I cut in front of them at the arcade, as I am wont to do. I digress. Read the entire story here.

Onions make me cry

So funny, yet so true. This is satire that the "1/2 Hour News Hour" (which I completely forgot to watch on Sunday - here's hoping I can catch the lameness on YouTube - after posting I watched the leaked clip, and wow, it was rough) is in desperate need of.

7,000 Iraqis U.S. Bound

The United States has agreed to admit 7,000 Iraqi refugees into the country. What do you think?

Coming soon - some reactions to Britney Spears' shaved head. Tentative title of the post: HOLY SHIT.

Happy Monday, mo-fo!

The conservative response to "The Daily Show" is set to air - and word is it sucks

I am a person that is routinely behind the times when it comes to pop-culture. After "American Idol" ended last season, I asked everyone who the old guy that had his picture taken with Simon was (it was Taylor Hicks). I didn't know who Biggie Smalls or Tupac were until a good two years after Biggie was killed. To this day, all I know about "Lost" is that die-hard fans think it's turned to shit, and that one big guy with hair hasn't lost any weight despite being stuck on a desert island for three seasons.

There is only one thing I was ahead of the curve on in my life, and it is altogether possible that on my death bed I will cite this feat as being one of the great accomplishments of my life.

I was watching "The Daily Show" when Jon Stewart took over in 1999. And I did it without basic cable.

Real Player used to have a feature where you could watch clips from Comedy Central's shows, which then included "Upright Citizen's Brigade" and "Strangers With Candy", but was always preceded by a clip from the headlines of "The Daily Show". The headlines would be updated every day, and before long, I made a point of getting online, using dial-up, mind you, to watch Stewart's take on the events of the day.

He was funny. I told everyone I knew that this guy was funny, and his barbs were rather sharp. I told everyone about these two funny correspondents he had on the show, two guys nobody had ever heard of: Steve Carell and Stephen Colbert.

I found them first. Ask my parents if you don't believe me. I win.

So, of course, when "24" creator and executive producer Joel Surnow* announced he was starting a counter-program on Fox News, "The 1/2 Hour News Hour", I felt like someone was threatening to beat up my little brother. Then I realized that it was going to be on Fox News, was being executive-produced by a guy that makes an although entertaining, utterly ridiculous action show**, and was created specifically to have a right-leaning political slant. I knew right away this was going to suck, because if there's one thing conservatives are lousy at, it's comedy. If there are two things, comedy and haircuts.***

A clip from the show was leaked online earlier this week, and there's already been some heavy criticism. Comedy Central's insider blog has sounded off here and here; Slate put up a pretty comprehensive analysis here. The lead-off joke as Slate reports goes thusly:

"Illinois Senator Barack Obama admits that as a teenager he sometimes used cocaine. This news sent Obama's approval rating among Democrats plummeting to an all-time low of 99.9 percent."

Wow. Remember when I mentioned writing a humor column in high school that was Mad TV-caliber funny on occasion? This is on-par with a stand-up bit I did in elementary school. This goes without saying that this story was here and gone over a month ago - it's not funny for the exact same reason why my upcoming thoughts on the media coverage of Anna Nicole Smith's passing won't be funny. It's like making a Monica Lewinsky joke (which other noted conservative funnyman/fat-fuck Rush Limbaugh still drops every now and then).

You want some tips on how to make a funny joke, Fox News? I'll help, I'm not sure you'll like the punch line.

You want help anyway? Okay. Don't say I didn't warn you.

"An excerpt from Barack Obama's autobiography was brought to light last month, wherein he admits to using cocaine as a teenager. It's still hard to gauge how this will affect Obama's candidacy, but it's unlikely that voters would elect a candidate with a history of drug abuse to the nation's highest office.
...well...fairly unlikely."

Sorry, Fox News. It really is the most obvious joke that I can think of, at least.

Catch the suck when it premieres this Sunday night. The Daily Show and Colbert Report will be there to cleanse the pallet as per usual on Monday.


*Read an interview in The New Yorker where Surnow shows he's mildly crazy, such as his insistence that torture is an effective way of extracting information despite almost every military and intelligence authority arguing otherwise or the fact he wants to make a counter-movie to George Clooney's Good Night, And Good Luck that shows Joseph McCarthy as "an American hero or, maybe, someone with a good cause who maybe went too far" here.

**Don't get me wrong, I think "24" is entertaining, I own all the seasons on DVD, even though I've only seen two and a half seasons' worth - yet another pop-culture staple on which I'm woefully behind the times.

***Let's not even get into Bush and the Neo-Cons in this post, because I will likely start foaming at the mouth.

News item "China death sentence for ant scam" delivers exactly what it promises

When you start your day with a headline like this, you know it's only going to get better. Hail Reuters! For the full story about the multi-million dollar black ant scam, click here.

This fulfills my obligation to write something about sports

Give me a break - I started this blog right before the Super Bowl, and if there's any sport I'm in the least qualified to discuss in such a formal and public forum as this, it's football. If I had to write about two sports, it would be pro football and college football. Inasmuch it's harder to closely follow baseball throughout the season, which has yet to begin, and I don't know enough about basketball to discuss Steve Nash or the NCAA tournament, except to say that the new Nike ad campaign is awesome and Northwestern shouldn't expect a spot in the tourney, that leaves me in a bit of a pickle. I could break down Super Bowl XLI, but frankly, it just hurts too much.

EDITOR'S NOTE: The following 6 paragraphs are a really boring unfunny rant about how boring NASCAR is. Just thought I should warn you.

So, what's the big sports news these days, aside from Carlos Zambrano being his typical asshole self (especially great because he couldn't lead the Loveable Losers to anything resembling a chance for the playoffs last year) and Beyonce gracing the cover of SI's Swimsuit Issue? 5 NASCAR teams were severely penalized for various acts of cheating before the Daytona 500, ranging from putting foreign substances into the fuel tanks to modifying the aerodynamics of the car's body. What does this mean for NASCAR?

I don't care.

I'm sorry if you're a fan of NASCAR, but I just don't get it. Yes, sure, I love a good car chase in a movie, I get the thrill of speed, but the average length of a NASCAR race is somewhere in the neighborhood of 3 hours and 20 minutes. No media time outs. Nothing like a full count, a free throw, a putt, a third and long, anything where there's a moment of calm before what could be a defining moment that can change the outcome of the game. Yes, there are moments that change the outcome of the race, but dammit, they're just going in circles. I've played games of pick-up football that have lasted for an hour and a half, basketball that have lasted an hour, and little league games that were 7 innings - long enough to qualify for a legal MLB game if it were to get rained out. I, however, never in my life played with a Matchbox racetrack set for even an hour. If I spend 45 minutes driving in my actual car, going in a straight line, I can get so pissed off that I question the life decisions and moral fortitude of those driving around me. Driving sucks. It SUCKS. I HATE IT, AND I'M SURE YOU HATE IT TO. Who looks forward to the morning commute? That's all NASCAR is, a three-hour plus commute. Can you tell I'm getting bored just writing about it? Read this paragraph. It's rambling and circular and pointless, and it doesn't take you three hours to read.

Look, case in point: play a game of Madden '07 football on a games console. You play 4 5-minute quarters, the game takes you maybe 40-45 minutes to play out. It'll probably be at least as exciting as a decent actual pro-football game, if you're playing at an appropriate difficulty for your skill level, the game will be fairly close.

Play a round of Mario Kart. A race will take you about 5 minutes to complete, and you can shoot tortoise shells at your opponents if they don't summon bolts of lightning to strike you down first.

Then, play a round of NASCAR '07. If you play a race that's half as long as an actual one, it'll last an hour and a half. Compare to Madden, where with some simply modifications, namely making the game clock accelerated and playing 7 or 8-minute quarters, you can execute about the same number of snaps as in an actual game of football, and it'll still take about an hour or less. Or, you can simulate half a race, where you don't get to shoot objects at your opponent, force fumbles, or do anything more interesting than pulling into the pit to change your tires, and waste 90 minutes of your life. With those 90 minutes you could play 2 games of Madden, read a book, take a nap, cook dinner, or watch 2 real-time episodes of "24" on DVD. You could get into your real car, take this game back to the store and exchange it for something more interesting, like a deck of playing cards or a potted plant. Goddammit, I'm ready for football to start again.

EDITOR'S NOTE: This is the end of the boring unfunny rant about NASCAR. Sorry.


So, in other more interesting news, the San Diego Chargers are looking for a new coach, including '85 Bears MLB "Samurai Mike" Singletary, because after having a 14-2 season with a record-setting RB and one of the most-feared defenses in football, it was obvious that Marty Schottenheimer had to go.

Also, this week was Gregg Easterbrook's last installment in this year's Tuesday Morning Quarterback column for ESPN's Page 2. I've read him every week this season, and usually find him to be entertaining, occasionally insightful, if not on occasion a little snobby (read a great mock-up of his column here - thanks TC!). This week's column was a little much, though, as Easterbrook goes through all the sports journalists' predictions for this NFL season and explains how they were wrong (for example, pre-season Super Bowl favorite Carolina didn't make the playoffs). In his defense, he turns the microscope at himself a few times, but he is just a little too happy to point out how stupid everyone is (except when he rightfully criticizes an analyst for saying the Lions could be a dark-horse playoff contender. They're the Lions. They're contractually obligated to blow) when they didn't predict the Colts and the Bears would be the last teams standing. The last time I checked, the thing I love the most about sports is that they are unpredictable. Gregg can remind us of that, I just wish he could do it without being a pretentious ass.

Well, that fulfills my obligation to write something about sports. Except, of course, this column blows and actually says NOTHING about sports. I'll do better next time, promise.

Expect it sometime next September.

For America's singles, let's hope chocolate really is better than sex

Hoorah, it's Valentine's Day, time to feel either a.) depressed that you're alone and bitter at the incessant commercialization that serves only to stimulate the greeting card, chocolate candy, and floral industries, or b.) incredibly anxious because you're pretty sure whatever you bought or made for your Significant Other (if you're a guy, let's be honest - you bought it)(if you're a guy and you made something that isn't a photo album, chances are you're a sissy and you lost your balls in her purse long ago) isn't good enough, which will lead them to question what the hell they're doing with you in the first place. It wouldn't be as bad if the holiday wasn't in February, which I figure to be the least romantic month of the year, especially if you're above the Mason-Dixon line. Nothing says romance like softly grabbing your partner's hand as you drive home from an evening out, only to jerk it out so you can grab the wheel and avoid careening into the snow plow that's spreading salt all over the street, turning whatever snow that's managed to fall in the bitter cold from a soft sensual white to a sexy brown sludge. This holiday should really be in June.

Is Valentine's Day bullshit? Yes, it is. It began, originally, as a Roman fertility festival, which would find its modern day equivalent in a "Pimps and Ho's" frat party, basically an excuse for everyone to be drunk and horny and spank each other. Yet here we are, suffering through months of ads for Vermont Teddy Bears (Yay! My idiot boyfriend got me a teddy bear that looks like a pirate! Maybe I won't tell him I'm banging Ted in marketing for another month or so) and hoping that a random day in the dead of winter doesn't turn into a total relationship cluster-fuck disaster because the puppies on the card you bought look fat.

Anyway, last week a story broke about two embracing skeletons being unearthed near Verona, and of course, the afternoon news was filled with snippets about the original Romeo and Juliet. I immediately feared that whoever does the advertising for DeBeers would snatch up the photo and use it in a last-ditch Valentine's Day campaign, some lame-ass variation on "a diamond is forever". I called a friend of mine that works in advertising to make sure that if her company had that account, they'd give me money, because it's obviously a brilliant, if not nauseating, idea.

I passed the idea on to yet another friend of mine, who thought it would be ironic if the skeletons turned out to be that of two men. My wheels spun some more. If that was the case, I thought Snickers could capitalize and maybe take some heat off their much-criticized Super Bowl ad. Just imagine it now:

Two dude skeletons uncovered in Italy.
"Oh man, I think we were just buried in the sand embracing each other for six thousand years!"
"Damn, is that gay?"
"Maybe. Quick, do something manly!"
Nothing happens. They groan as they try to move. Then, one of the skeleton's femurs decomposes and blows away in the wind.
"Yes!"
And then the tagline: SNICKERS: NOT IF YOU'RE A HOMO.

Perfect. I don't think anyone will have any problem with that.

Well, I have a date.

With a frozen pizza. And it doesn't care if I think it's too round.

Ralph Fiennes flying high

Really, you can't pull off this kind of stuff unless you're an Academy Award-nominated actor. From the Telegraph UK:

"Ralph Fiennes in 'amorous' mid-air incident

A female flight attendant has been suspended by Qantas after an "in-flight incident" with the actor Ralph Fiennes, the Australian airline said yesterday.

The star of The English Patient and Schindler's List allegedly became "amorous" with Lisa Robertson, 38, in a lavatory on a flight from Australia to India last month.

At least two crew members saw the pair leave the cubicle within moments of each other during the flight from Darwin to Mumbai on Jan 24.

"The flight attendant has been stood down following an in-flight incident," a Qantas spokesman said. "She is in the middle of a disciplinary process and the case is still panning out."

Ms Robertson, who has been suspended from duty, has denied having sex with Mr Fiennes, 44, after becoming friendly with him during the flight. She started chatting after serving him in the business class section.

Mr Fiennes had been in Australia to perform at the Sydney Festival, where he starred in the Samuel Beckett play First Love.

He separated from his long-time partner, Francesca Annis, last year.

Ms Robertson served in the New South Wales police force for 14 years before joining Qantas in September, 2004. She is a qualified scuba diver."

The best part of this 'news' story is the last line: "She is a qualified scuba diver." How is this relevant? The sea and the sky are opposite. Her training in scuba diving has no bearing on her ability to be a flight attendant or have sex with Ralph Fiennes. We don't need to know it. Take it out.

It reminds me of one of Bush's previous State of the Union addresses when Dan Rather pointed out, as Bush was making his way down the aisle, that "the President is wearing a blue tie".

The Bostonian government has watched far too much "24"

When I first heard that suspicious packages were being discovered around the Boston metropolitan area last week, I wasn't sure what to expect. Since September 11th, we've had several domestic terrorism scares that have proven false, such as packages at the Port of Miami-Dade, or the giant burrito in Clovis, New Mexico. Although part of me feared a terrorism plot was about to be unleashed on the East Coast, I admit that I mostly suspected another false alarm.

By the early afternoon, reports were coming from the Boston government saying that it was indeed a hoax. I finished my work day without giving the incident much of a second thought.

Later in the evening when I booted up my computer, and learned that the city of Boston nearly shut down for a few dozen Lite Brite sets arranged to depict the Mooninites from Aqua Teen Hunger Force, I didn't know whether to laugh, cry, or simply bang my forehead into my desk over and over again. I ended up doing a combination of the three, and added in some raspberry sherbet directly from the container for good measure.

I admit that I, like many a person that's been in college within the past few years, know about Cartoon Network's Adult Swim block, and its original show Aqua Teen Hunger Force. I also admit that I have seen every episode of the program multiple times, and further admit that I have had several discussions about the program as a very clever and funny post-modern cartoon, the first of which was actually a classroom lecture in one of my collegiate media-theory classes. The episode of ATHF we watched for the lecture was the first episode that featured the Mooninites.

So of course, when I saw the 1-foot boards featuring Ignignokt and Err, I immediately knew that there was no threat to the city of Boston. No Islamic fundamentalist is so well-tuned to fringe pop-culture that they could imagine decorating an explosive device with the boxy egomaniacal characters. For some reason, I feel like the most timely pop-culture reference Osama could come up with would be related to the "Fresh Prince of Bel-Air" or "Full House". I also feel like "Family Guy" made that joke before, but I'm not sure... it feels like a "Family Guy" joke, and I guess that's all that really matters. However, I digress.

There's a few things that boggle my mind and/or piss me off about this whole situation. The first is that on seeing the photos of the boards, one of my first reactions was 'how could someone be afraid of Err?', which was immediately followed by my feeling like a snob. I'll bet there are a lot of people my age that have never heard of ATHF, or even Adult Swim, let alone actual grown-ups with jobs that don't have the time or interest to watch talking fast food items solve crimes at 11 o'clock at night on a network dedicated to cartoons. I'm pretty sure I'm not an annoying beatnik snob, so I hate it when I act like one, even if it's in the privacy of my own brain. That's the least of the problems I have with this situation, though.

Second, these signs had been up in major cities across the country for weeks. For weeks. Nobody seemed to take notice of these signs anywhere. I just find it hard to believe that some Boston beat cop didn't see just ONE of these signs when it was lit at night, and in turn couldn't call off the insanity before it got out of hand. If you're a police officer, isn't it your job to take note of odd things like lit-up signs hanging from bridges and awnings in your precinct? Furthermore, there was a previous cross-country ad campaign prior to Christmas that featured the Mooninites on billboards - I saw them in LA and Chicago. I'm sure SOMEONE in Boston must have seen them, as I'm pretty sure, from what I've read on the matter, the billboards were in Boston as well. Again, there wasn't a single authority, specifically a police officer, that didn't notice the billboards and make the connection? Granted, the panels weren't lit during the day, so the character may not have been apparent until after the boards were taken down, but that brings me to the next point in my rant:

Who the hell was it that called the authorities about these things in the first place? I don't know about you, or what terrorists-in-training are taught in the desert, but I figure if I was going to plant a bomb somewhere, I'd hide it. Who saw a flat board in clear view and assumed it was a bomb? It's a BOARD. It is FLAT. Yes, on some of the boards there were exposed batteries and hanging wires, but you would think that the situation would prompt a concerned citizen to, at most, call the police and say that there was something odd. Actually, come to think of it, I don't remember hearing the bomb scare came from a citizen, which leads me to believe it could have been that it was an authority figure's reaction to the panels, which is even more inexcusable. The only justification they had for suspecting it was a bomb is, I think, because the panel was black. I guess it's common knowledge that bombs aren't made in pastels. But that more or less leads me to my next point:

The guys at the ironically named advertising firm Interference, Inc didn't think that placing a bunch of black panels all over major US cities without notifying any authorities was a bad idea? It makes me think of the time in college when I was working on a short film with a few other students, and since it was a class project, we couldn't find any performers so we were in it ourselves. I played the part of a NYPD sniper, and we filmed my scene on the roof of the parking garage adjacent to the apartment building where one of my partners lived. Prior to filming, I asked the guy to make sure his building management knew that we were working on a short film, because I was going to be in broad daylight with a very realistic-looking air rifle equipped with a scope (this guy was a big paintballer). He said we were fine, there was nothing to worry about, and we started working. Sure enough, after about 15 minutes of filming, a police cruiser tore its way up the parking structure, and out jumps the cop. He told me I was lucky the camera had been right next to me when he pulled up, because otherwise he, and I quote, probably would have shot me. Oops, says my buddy - turns out he forgot to tell the doorman on duty. Point is, if you're going to be involved in something that will in any way disrupt the status quo, you cover your ass. Interference may not have gotten a go-ahead from the cities to put these things up, but I'll bet if they'd used boards that were painted white instead of black, this thing may have not happened at all, and it sure-as-shit wouldn't have happened had they filed some sort of petition to do performance art around the city with a list of locations where the panels would be located. Of course, that would defeat the intent of random unorthodox advertising, and in Interference's defense, the panels didn't cause problems anywhere else. So what happened?

Boston authorities reacted as they should have when they first received a report of a suspicious device, but should have been able to discern from their first bomb-squad disarmament that this was nothing to be worried about - in some of the news footage, you can see police sheepishly walking away from one of the sites with the board in hand, like a kid at summer camp that freaked out thinking a bear was outside his tent, only to find it was a chipmunk.

In the aftermath of Boston's scare, Time Warner agreed to pay out $2 million to cover the costs of Boston's response, the guys that installed the signs will probably go to jail, and the head of Cartoon Network resigned. The ratings for ATHF will probably shoot through the roof, though, especially because it was announced in the aftermath that the Nielsen ratings would begin to include college students, meaning that with the influx of advertising money sure to be coming Adult Swim's way, nothing will change.

The thing that pissed me off the most about this, though? In their press conference after being charged with inciting a bomb scare, Peter Berdovsky and Sean Stevens began by saying they would only take questions regarding 1970's style haircuts.

1970's style haircuts.

They were being charged with causing a bomb scare in a major US city in a post-9/11 world, and they announced they were only going to discuss styles of hair common in the 1970's.

I don't care that it was foolish and it made them seem arrogant and unappreciative of the gravity of the situation. I care that "1970's style haircuts", no matter how you look at it, isn't fucking funny. At all. I wrote a humor column for two and a half years in high school that was, at best, Mad TV-caliber funny, and as a high-schooler I could have come up with something a little funnier, and certainly more provacative and relevant to the issue at hand.

Funny topics to bring up when you're being charged with causing a terrorism scare that shut down a major US city:
- The musical merits of Paris Hilton's album
- Whether or not Peyton Manning would lead the Colts to a Super Bowl victory
- Which of the Bush twins is hotter

Actually relevant topics to bring up when you're being charged with causing a terrorism scare that shut down a major US city:
- Whether or not your first amendment rights of free speech are being violated
- Debate why our country has itself wound so tight that an ad campaign could have this effect
- Saying nothing, plug in a Lite-Brite, put it on the podium, and spell out "THESE CHARGES ARE ABSURD" one peg at a time, then leaving

Still, it was kind of worth it to see their lawyer try to explain they were taking it very seriously, but they are performance artists.

I can't wait for the day when kids are expelled from school for pointing their fingers like guns while playing cops and robbers.

Oh, wait. That already happened.

BEAR DOWN!

Superbowl XLI kicks off in about an hour and a half, and the city of Chicago has been abuzz since winning the NFC Championship two weeks ago. This should be one hell of game, and I'm hoping will be better than last year's snooze fest with the Pittsburgh Steelers and Seattle Seahawks.

Yes, Rex Grossman has had some lousy games this year, which no doubt you've heard about ad naseum these past few weeks, but his performance won't be as nearly important to this game as the Bears' secondary. Peyton is very dangerous - he makes great reads, is very accurate, and gets rid of the ball quick. All season the Bears' CBs and safeties have been great at breaking up plays and forcing turnovers, and if Chicago stands a chance, they have to keep Manning in check and get a pick or two. Rex doesn't have to play great, he just has to keep the ball out of the Colts' hands and help Jones and Benson keep the running game rolling, the clock ticking, and Peyton off the field.

BEARS KEYS TO VICTORY:
- Establish the running game
- Win turnover ratio
- Force Indianapolis to run the ball

Can't wait for kickoff - GO BEARS!


Super Bowl Shuffle - video powered by Metacafe

Also, let us say that while the Superbowl is exciting and entertaining, that tomorrow either the thrill of victory or agony of defeat will be put in perspective when the news of the next US troops killed in action or Iraqi civilians bombed inevitably comes from overseas.