RIP Agent Double-Zero

It sucks to start the blogging season on a tragic note, but I need to pay tribute to one of my favorite NBA punchlines (second only to Kurt Rambis). Kevin Duckworth, a quality human being and athletically unspectacular yet successful seven-footer, died yesterday. The details are still unclear, but I'm hoping The Duck passed as a result of sharp elbows to the breadbasket.

I'm glad I'm done with Craiglist for a while

It's a tough housing market for renters out there, and I don't need to deal with this type of invidious discrimination against a suspect class.

Sue Simmons drops the F bomb

Veteran NBC New York news anchor Sue Simmons - usually a very classy broad - accidentally let an expletive fly during the 10 O'Clock news the other night. She sounds pissed at some jackass. My grandparents heard it and were appalled, so I had to find it on Youtube and make it available for public consumption here.

TX teens know how to party

I enjoy every second of this story. The last line is a fitting end, too.

Attention all Claymates

Major Clay Aiken developments can be seen here. OMG...I love the new look!

This guy is worse than a pedophile

These heinous actions are almost unspeakable. What happened to the toothpick? WHERE DID IT GO?

Also, what are the elements of wizardry?

Headline writers are out of control

This headline easily destroys the sea lion killing / salmon war headline from the other day. I refuse to even stoop to the level of proposing ways to flip this to make it funnier.

Just kidding, I'll be thinking about it for the rest of the night. And giggling.

Modified Donkey Punch

Well worth the misdemeanor disorderly conduct he's going to receive.

River surfing, powered by dynamite

This video seems vaguely hoaxy to me, but not completely implausible, so I'm going to just accept it as legit because it comes from Quicksilver. These dudes throw TNT into a river and then their buddy paddles into the little waist-high wave that results. Awesome idea and execution. Not as sweet as the guys who surfed the waves caused by the calving glacier in Alaska, but commendable nonetheless.

This week's sign of the apocalypse

This kind of stuff is making me hope that the Chinese just hurry it up and invade this country. We deserve it.

:::PUKES:::

Check out this insipid op-ed from a Yale Law School 1L. I'm surprised that the Christian Science Monitor, which is usually a very respectable newspaper, ran something this useless. It reads like she tweaked her horridly liberal and self-absorbed personal statement just a little bit and sent it out at the behest of the Yale PR department.

Outback Wins!

Men's Health has bestowed the Outback Cheese fries with the prestigious title of the "Worst Food in America." That's an impressive accomplishment considering this is AMERICA we're talking about. These are one of my all-time favorite appetizers, and I have consumed a whole order by myself before eating a steak. I didn't know what the nutritional stats were for these things until now, but I'm not that surprised by the stunning fat/calorie numbers: 2,900 calories and 182 grams of fat!

Who's laughing now?

I apologize in advance for the tasteless caption in light of the stories I'm going to post. This story caught my eye mainly for the ultra-descriptive headline-writing: "Sea lions shot dead on Columbia River as salmon battle rages." This is how I imagine the climactic final mission of the Oregon Trail video game would have gone down if GTA4's designers had created it.

Those salmon fishermen at least have a reason to take matters into their own hands and wipe out the competition for the increasingly rare and pricey Chinooks that swim up the Columbia, but this related story is even more disgusting. If you've ever driven up the Central California coast along the PCH and stopped to see the elephant seals in their rookery near San Simeon you probably understand my disapproval. Some yokel shot and killed three of these beasts for no good reason. I know that the elephant seals are ornery as hell and occasionally take a bite out of an innocent NorCal surfer (who is already miserably cold and worried enough about sharks), but it makes no sense to shoot them. These are objectively awesome animals. All they do is lumber around the beach and fight each other, and they are incredibly fun to watch. The Feds are on it at least, so hopefully they'll catch the bastard and have him square off in the gladiators ring against one of the big ones.

Hilarious ATL Post

For anybody who missed it, I assure you that this video of John Conyers' wife arguing with an 8th grader is well worth the 4 minutes. A junior high student lays it on Monica Conyers, the pro-tem president of the Detroit City Council, for inappropriately arguing with the counsel's president during a meeting and calling him "Shrek." This woman is a loud-mouthed idiot, and its obvious that that fucked-up city needs better leadership than her.

Pac-Man explained

Most art is a huge scam, but this is genius.

Obligatory daily GTA4 post

Full disclosure: I was one of the elite group of nerds who waited in line at midnight to purchase this game, so I have a serious axe to grind with anybody who badmouths it. Oh yeah, it also didn’t work on my old-ass POS 360 due to technical issues so I went out and bought a new one the next day.

Side-note: if you want to purchase my old-ass XBOX that doesn’t work very well, please let me know because I will cut you a sweet deal on it. I’m a generous guy, I know.

Anyway, Mothers Against Drunk Driving, one of the most well-organized, influential, well-intentioned, and obnoxious special interest groups in all the land is already setting the gears in motion to publicly shame and harass GTA4’s producer Rockstar Games.

For anyone unfortunate enough to not have played this game yet, it is worth pointing out that the amount of detail the programmers put into the game is absurd. Besides doing missions and randomly killing people or crashing cars in hilarious ways, you are expected to build up relationships with other characters in the game by doing things like calling them up on your cell-phone and inviting them to join you for fun activities like shooting pool, going bowling, or hitting up the local dive bar for a few fine Chardonnays. Building relationships helps your character by giving you back-up when you get involved in dicey situations or reviving your health after a roll in the hay with a new lady-friend.

MADD, of course, is pissed at the fact that the game allows you to go to the bar and then stumble out and drive your friends back to their homes. Their public statement is right here. This knee-jerk reaction condemning the game’s developers for including this new feature misses the mark for the same reason that most of the Grand Theft Auto critics do: it demonstrates that they are out of touch and haven’t played it.

Driving drunk in this game is hard as fuck, and it often gets you into serious trouble. If a police officer sees you driving in this state, even if you do nothing else wrong, you get a wanted level and risk getting arrested. Just today, I went out with my cousin and got e-shitfaced and attempted to drive him home. I had planned to undertake a lengthy mission right after I dropped him off, but I got screwed when I crashed my car, it caught fire and exploded and killed my beloved cousin Roman. I managed to escape getting fucked by the long dick of the law myself, but it still put a crimp in my action to have to go out of my way soon afterwards to pick his reincarnated soul up at the hospital and drive him back home. I was sober this time.

It’s a funny diversion, but most kids probably understand after playing the game that driving drunk gets you into all kind of bad situations that are otherwise avoidable. MADD should relax, recognize that kids realize drunk driving is a choice, and focus on raising their children to tell the difference between right and wrong. I bet you anything a lawsuit is going to follow in the wake of this, and I hope to god it goes down in flames at the hands of a judge wielding his equitable powers like a black-robed, freedom-loving champion. Fucking nanny-staters.

Hero Scientist to Peanut Allergies: "Fuck you."

Dr. Wesley Burks, a brash researcher at Duke University Medical Center, claims he is going to smack down this weak-ass allergy within the next five years. This article also backs up my causation theories: "too little exposure to infectious agents in early childhood can raise one's susceptibility to allergic reactions." If Dr. Burks is wrong and these allergies are still around by the time I have kids, I'm going to be making it rain peanuts over their cribs.

Sounds familiar

Luckily neither I nor my roommates have infant children, because the conditions in this house don't sound much different from the way our place looked after a certain Feb Club party this year. We've got enough problems with the police as it is.

My favorite descriptive statement from the article: "There were dried/evaporated stains in the living room that were still moist and sticky and attracted dirt to make a filth paste." I've definitely mopped up some filth paste.

The Ukraine is STRONG!

Restaurants are opening and closing here in C'Ville all the time. Somebody with more entrepreneurial spirit than me should open up a Sino-Ukranian Fusion restaurant specializing in animal phalluses cooked in lard. Ideally, that restaurant would be on the corner, and would be open until 3am. That person might also open up a new taxi service with a fleet of lard-fueled modified tractors.

This is what those Darden students call "thinking outside the box." Imagine the synergies.

I wish I summering in a Beijing office

Guolizhuang Restaurant in Beijing focuses on penis and testicle dishes, but also serves delicious non-cocknballs items like sheep fetus. The prices are pretty high, but if you're really a big spender the rumor is you can treat yourself to wangs from endangered species like tigers! A yak penis is running more than $300 right now. Totally worth it, though.

I hope our Olympic athletes check this place out because this type of diet is medically proven to add great amounts of vigor to constitutions.

Also, I didn't know that dogs are the only animals that have an actual penis bone. Good for dogs.

Wacky Austrian Dads!

This story is one of the crazier abduction/imprisonment scenarios I've ever heard. This old man kidnapped his daughter in 1984 and locked her in his basement dungeon for 24 years. The daughter, now 42, has six children. Three of the kids were "adopted" by their loving grandparents and allowed to go to school. The other three kids, ages 5, 18 and 19, have NEVER SEEN SUNLIGHT. They've never left the dungeon. Holy crap. Obviously, their grandpa is also their daddy.

This old man didn't live alone, either. He has a wife who has lived in this crazy-house the whole time, and she didn't even know the other kids existed!

Finals suck, but it could always be worse.

Tattoo of the day

As you probably know, I'm big into ink. While my personal tats tend towards various Aryan Nation gang symbols and Swastikas on my forehead, I do appreciate the artistry of thus guy's ridiculously sweet Spider-Man tattoos. This must have hurt like a heart attack.

One of those days

First, I get rained on when I am leaving the law school to go home for dinner.

Second, far worse than the rain, some bastard whose shared iTunes account I was listening to in the library signed off when the best part of the song was coming on. The breakdown in the Deftones song "Nosebleed" was just about over and the throat-shredding screaming was just about to begin. How the hell am I supposed to learn evidence under these conditions?

Charlottesville Cell?

So I was standing in the Harris Teeter beer aisle last night at around 11pm mulling my options when a group of about 7 rowdy, drunken dudes speaking heavily-accented English rolled up to buy beer. They were dressed like Eurotrash and had more cologne/AXE body-spray on than most Jersey Shore denizens, and I deduced that they were Iranian (or maybe Turkish - so I'm not great w/ deducing ethnicities, but they were from somewhere East of the Czech Republic and West of India).

What really made me notice them, other than their general obnoxiousness, was the fact that one of them pointed to a Six-Pack of Hop-Opalypse IPA (label pictured above) and said, "This is what New York City is going to look like in a few years." And then the rest of them started cackling maniacally.

Uhhhh....not cool man. Too soon.

Another bullshit use of state authority

A Florida teenager has been arrested for elder abuse for making a video in which his senile 86-year old grandmother wears a black mask, holds a gun and threatens to shoot all the pigs.

The video is here, and it's awesome. This isn't very different from the grandma in Don't Be a Menace, and I didn't see the 5-0 bangin' on the Wayans Brothers' door.

T-Mac is a chump

Tracy McGrady is a damn good basketball player, but he's not very good at winning. He's not taking his team's playoffs ineptitude very well, but his quote today was gold:

"It's my fault," McGrady said. "It's my fault we missed free throws. It's my fault we lost both games. Blame me. It's my fault we fouled to tie the game up. That's my fault. It's my fault they get easy layups. It's my fault we're not executing well on the offensive end. It's my fault a couple people in the stands ordered Heinekens and they got Budweiser. It's my fault. I'm sorry."

Does he have a comedy writer on his staff to come up with the Heinekens crack?

Idiocy in the armpit of New England

First, this master arsonist bent on raw destruction threw a Molotov cocktail through the window of an East Providence fire house. Good work, sparky.

Second, RI legislators are undertaking eliminate fractional pricing at gas stations, requiring owners to charge only whole-cent prices when selling retail fuel. Sure, the economy is in rough shape and gas prices are high, but do legislators really think that their constituents are stupid enough to be fooled by gas station owners' fractional pricing system? Maybe firehouse fire-bomber guy is. Even if they are that stupid, gas station owners are only gypping them out of what, 30 or 40 cents each month. Do really stupid people budget their money so tightly that this makes any difference to their lives?

I thank God that I do not pay taxes to that dysfunctional government.

Classy, real classy

This video was made without any apparent comic intent.

Is Penis Theft a Felony? Misdeanor? Violation?

Yeah, it's 2008 and there are places in the world (shockingly, Africa) where state police are arresting alleged sorcerers for allegations of penis theft. Don't worry, the Reuters article doesn't have any pictures.

And if you doubt the veracity of these claims, you're wrong. "It's real. Just yesterday here, there was a man who was a victim. We saw. What was left was tiny," said 29-year-old Alain Kalala, who sells phone credits near a Kinshasa police station.

Just watch, you'll see Winona Ryder on The Superficial charged with penis shoplifting from an erotic boutique in West Hollywood once she gets the idea in her head.

I bet the driver had NY plates

Now, I've got a lot of issues with Charlottesville drivers. People here refuse to use blinkers, drive god-awfully slow, have no idea how to handle a 3-way stop sign, and will happily wait through an interminable second cycle of lights when making a left-hand turn rather than attempt an unthinkably aggressive maneuver like advancing into the middle of the intersection.

I only wish I could express my road rage half as eloquently as this guy.

Music Dump

Finals time is when I usually find tons of new music that I like due to extensive time in the library and extreme boredom. Here's some new or newish stuff that I like, with full MP3s, listed in rough order of how much I like each song.

Why? - The Hollows (mp3)

Annuals - Sore (mp3)

Fleet Foxes - Mykonos (mp3)

Bob Mould - The Silence Between Us (mp3)

MGMT - Time to Pretent (mp3)

My Morning Jacket - Evil Urge (mp3)

El-P - Drive (mp3)

American Hero? I think so.

So some 8th-grader in Kentucky is in deep trouble for putting crumbled peanut butter cookies in the lunch-box of a fellow student that he knew to have severe peanut allergies. The poor prankster was arrested and booted out of school and is facing charges in juvenile court for felony "wanton endangerment." I think this is completely wrong for a number of reasons:

1) Peanut allergies are a myth. When you were growing up, did you ever meet a kid with some made-up allergy like that? No, I didn't think so. This trumped up "medical condition" is just a result of wussy parents coddling their wussy kids who are afraid of peanuts. I can understand the fear because it's not entirely clear whether peanuts are fruits, vegetables, or meat products, but please get over it.

2) Peanut butter cookies are fucking delicious. Especially if they're covered in chocolate - I actually wish this news report was more specific with respect to telling us exactly what type of peanut butter cookie this was. If it was a Girl Scout Tag-Along the prankster-kid should face fines for wasting one of the most delicious seasonal confections on the market. Anyway, if the "peanut allergy" kid had had the balls to take a bite I bet he would have loved it and never had a problem with peanuts again for the rest of his life.

3) The prank itself was hilarious. Positing for a moment that some sort of physical reaction would have taken place if the wussy allergy-kid had eaten the cookies, it would have been priceless. Those kids would have been talking about the look on his face and giving each other high-fives for the rest of their high school careers.

Ha! Ha! (In Nelson Muntz voice)

Kobe: "Good defensive performance this afternoon, Drunko McDeeweesalot!"

People all over the world...Join hands

This clip of President Bush dancing to some sweet African drumbeats makes me cringe and hate America. I think this is kind of old, but I had never seen it before. I wish it had just stayed that way.

Attention Shoppers

For only $18.99, you can have a versatile and comfortable new mankini. I can't think of a Feb Club theme where this would not be appropriate. This will pay for itself in no time.

Falling is funny

LOL!

Yale = A Despicable Institution

This is what your alumni contributions are helping to support, Yalies: Forced Miscarriages as a Commentary on Man's Inhumanity Toward Man.

Yuck. And with the poor old Pope in town this week?

EDIT: This was a hoax, but the post title remains valid.

Vladimir Putin is marrying a 25-year old Gymnast/Model

Not to be outdone by France's old-scoundrel of a President Nicolas Sarkozy, Vladimir Putin, 56, is marrying a ridiculously young and flexible rhythmic gymnist, pictured above. To make it even better, he hasn't yet officially announce separating from his 50-year-old wife. I would love it if Dubya dumped Laura and pulled a stunt like this.

I'm in the wrong business

Holy cow - the highest paid hedge fund manager, John Paulson, made $3.7 billion last year. That's 3,700 million dollars. Taking a look at SI's list of the highest-paid professional athletes for 2007 helps put this in perspective: Tiger Woods, the highest-earner, made just over $100 million, and Amare Stoudemire, number 50 on the list, made a laughable $15 million.

So John Paulson made 37 times as much as Tiger Woods in 2007. Too bad I can't do math or swing a golf club.

Best News Ever?

Any commentary on this would take away from the news itself.

And, if I knew how to put videos on here, I would have put this youtube clip up here for illustration. (Don't worry it's work-safe).

Too soon?

This survey from MSNBC, designed to test your memory about the Va. Tech shootings, is way too detailed and macabre.

Columbia law students can't find this on their fancy big-city craigslists

I'm taking a road-trip to Louisa for some brand new free goats. This deal is too good to pass up, especially because these are nubian and pygmy goats. Those are basically the two best possible kinds of goats. I think nubians actually trump pygmies on the goat-quality scale (GQS), but it's close.

Oh yeah, I'm definitely slaughtering them as soon as I get them home. Those fucking stupid goats aren't getting into my vegetable garden.

Daily Obligatory Taxidermy Post 2

If I had to choose between this liquor decanter and the boner fox, I would take the boner fox in a heartbeat.

But why should I have to choose?

This is just following up my two prior posts, which were boring

WooHoo? I think so...

Providence College has finally hired a new men's basketball coach. The Friars thankfully shit-canned Tim Welsh immediately after the Big East tournament, and after being TURNED DOWN by two coaches with less-than-elite pedigrees, finally hired Drake's Keno Davis - the consensus national coach of the year for 2008!

Granted, this guy Keno only has one year of head-coaching experience, but he did something pretty amazing at Drake.

I like this article about Davis' hiring from the Providence Journal. It notes, without comment, that: "after a day of touring the East Side, Newport and Rhode Island’s other hot spots, Davis returned to a hotel in Boston." Where else in the country can you visit all of a state's "hot spots" in a day, and then get the hell out of dodge and stay in a real hotel in a real city? Massachusetts needs to just annex poor little Rhody and make speaking with a strong Rhode Island accent a capital offense.

Comcast has a case of the sucks

The only good thing about Comcast is that they're not Cablevision, and thus didn't unleashed Isiah Thomas on New York or scuttle the West Side Stadium Plans. This (unsubstantiated) story is a good example of the type of customer service that they pride themselves on.

This dude politely asked a Comcast cable truck to move because his van was blocking the dude's driveway. Ten minutes later, his cable and internet were inexplicably cut off. He called customer service and had to deal with the awesome wait times and ludicrously unhelpful technical advice that Comcast customers around the county have come to appreciate.

If you have some love to share with this service provider, feel free to email their wunderkind CEO Brian Roberts (pictured above) at brian_roberts@comcast.com.

The Real "No Spin Zone"

If you're looking for an unbiased, factual and grammatically-correct new source for world news, I highly recommend checking out News From Korean Central News Agency of Peoples Democratic Republic of Korea. It's everything you would expect - and more - from a News Agency owned by one of the world's most hilariously insane dictators.

The layout of this site is godawful and a pain to navigate, but a lot of the pieces are total gems. 75% of the stories revolve around reporting of what Kim Jong Il is up to: usually accepting gifts delivered by visiting emissaries from random brutal dictatorships /third world shitholes, watching children perform in patriotic pageants, and reminiscing about his past feats of strength. The rest of the stories detail amazing North Korean scientific and technical discoveries that are clearly fake or FLAIL the "brigandish aggression being perpetrated by the imperialists," most notably the US and Japan.

This site has convinced me that the western media hates too much on North Korea. I mean, how can people there really be starving when the Flower-Goldfish shops in Pyongyang are abustle with crowds? The North Koreans were speaking truth to power when the News Agency called Vice President Cheney out: "the most cruel monster and bloodthirsty beast, as he has drenched various parts of the world in blood." JUCHE IDEA 4 LYFE.

More Nostalgia

With the long and painful slog to finals upon us, I thought that this blast from the past would be appropriate (especially because I'm realizing it's surprisingly hard to find funny things on the internet every single day). If it were socially acceptable, it would be a real lifesaver to have a Red Sox cap covered with thinly-sliced Tuna Carpaccio as a back-up when my Jujyfruits are gone after 4-5 hours in the library.

Obligatory Daily Taxidermy Post

Could someone less cheap than me who has a few extra £s burning a hole in their pockets please bid on this? It would really tie my living room together, and it could add a certain rustic charm to the outdoor back deck clubhouse when the weather is nice. Be sure to read the whole obnoxiously-formatted product description.

A Master's Weekend Tribute

I have no idea how to put videos on this blog, and I would probably be immediately sued for copyright infringement if I did, so I'm just going to link to this funny - yes, actually funny - Robin Williams bit about the likely origins of golf. It starts out just as cringe-worthy as 95% of the rest of this comedy special, but it gets better.

God that guy is greazy ball of sweat, hair and Oscar-caliber dramatic-acting ability.

Oh yea, and cf. that with Darrell Bluett, who I actually think is even better. Not on the jokes, where Robin Williams edges him out, but on the delivery and STYLE. Shifty eyes, bolo tie, and maroon beret? Gold, Jerry, gold.

What happened on January 1, 2006?

I saw this a few months ago and it completely confused me. Based on these stats it looks like Prague was the place to be for New Years Eve '06. If anybody can find a real explanation, I would like to hear it.

Note to self:

UVa's lazy-as-shit parking attendants have disincentivized me from making the right choice on a daily basis. I hate a lot of different things, but the environment is not one of them. Second note to self: buy Ass-Wart Cream for GIANT wart on my ass.

Can there be a more bad-ass name?

Nostalgia

Mr. T Ate My Balls is still going strong ten years later. I like this because it shows that while technology has advanced at an incredible pace over the past decade, my sense of humor has been stuck in the mud - where it belongs.

Good local barter deal on C'Ville Craigslist

I bet this guy is not a weirdo and gets tons of responses.

"This is how I chill, ma'am."

http://www.collegian.psu.edu/archive/2008/04/07/lion_denies_charges.aspx

The law is always coming down on hard-working folks who just want to relax after a long day.

first post - dedicated to w.j.v