Throw your hand up, if you like to shake babies
Throw your hand up, if you punch pregnant ladies
Throw your hand up, if you pee in the pool
cancer's not so bad, you get to wear a hat to school
-from one of the funniest, most offensive, and wittiest bands I've ever come across. And they happen to be local.
Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you the unforgettably hilarious Nutsnack I'm going to randomly drop lines of their lyrics in the occasional post for a while, so it might behoove you to do a little research for the inside jokes.
They remind me of a more comedy oriented and irreverent 2 Skinnee J's. My most favoritest band ever. For anybody in Wichita over the holidays, they're playing John Barleycorn's on Dec. 30th and we should all have some fun.
Welcome to the returning reoccuring segment...
TOG's Semi-Official Weekly List
The Overhyped:
Bird Flu
Old School Everything
Professional Football
Got the Upside:
KU Football
Computer Games
The Unrelenting Principle of Change
So lets lay some ground rules for the legitimate discussion on force deployment in Iraq:
The mere suggestion that U.S. troops may have done all that can be done, and should begin coming home is NOT analogous to treason, nor does it instantly discredit the suggestor as liberal pinko commie defeatist. It is entirely possible to support our troops and believe they should come home.
Just because you complain or speak you mind doesn’t mean anyone agrees with you, or even is listening. And suggesting a withdrawal now doesn’t mean that when it actually happens over the new few years, it was because of you. Withdrawal is not necessarily defeat. The goal wasn’t the stars and bars ruling or’e the land, so leaving was eventually going to happen regardless.
Blood-for-oil, Haliburton, corporation being corporationy, and President Bush’s National Guard record have no rightful place in this discussion, so if you invoke a hippy buzzword you lose all speaking privileges.
What’s done is done, complaining about the past is pretty damn useless and you need to realize this isn’t 2002 and we understand your angsty anarchism prevents you from condoning the harming of any of mother earth’s heavenly beings. Go back and go back to level 9 Vegan lichen salad. Hell, we kicked more of an ass (Spain) for less of a justification (U.S.S. Maine) than this 100 years ago, and we’re not we’re not arguing the merits of the Spanish-American war outside history classrooms are we. And McKinely was dumb, corrupt, AND fat (though being assassinated pretty much gives you guaranteed positive post-humus legacy)
9/11 adrenaline and corresponding free pass stopped short at the Afgan border. Vengeance hath been wrought upon the pagans’ heads. At this point using it as justification is disrespectful, dishonest, and a discredit to the legitimate and principled grounds for a fight against a growing militant Islamic threat. It’s not a blank check for your rages against the brown ones.
Now discuss as you will, but don’t be surprised if I call you a French-loving American-hating stuck-up fatalist or a bloodthirsty inbred ignorant lout, because you probably are.
There, I said it first. We all get it, turkey make you go sleepy, nappy time!
Now let it go!
Since I’ve got nobody here to keep my rabid ego in check, I’ve gone and outdone myself with an attempt at consumables. ‘Stuffed Acorn Squash, with a pork and apple cider stuffing spiced with oregano and white whine and pepper to taste’; what the hell is wrong with me? If I had a digital camera I’d carefully document my near certain failure, but instead I’ll just let you all know how bad I get shown up by grandma on Thursday, and whether or not I’m convicted of arson for burning the apartment complex to the ground with a dish obviously out of my league.
There are only two ways this is ending, I’m getting my own show on the Food Network, or I’m never allowed to cook for any social function ever again. There is no middle ground.
In a triumphant new format, and resurrected after a 2.5 Year sabbatical, it's...
TOG's Semi-Official Weekly List
The Ballyhooed:
California
Baltimore Orioles
Roe
Got the Upside:
Renting
Warm Donuts
Wade
If April showers bring May flowers, what do May flowers bring?
And now the answer with due merit belonging to a couple of the bestest female friends there ever were:
Pilgrims
I will have to give a ridiculously premised safety presentation to 30+ engineers in my group having never even witnessed a professional presentation.
On the bright side, it’ll be video-taped and sent to Cessna engineering facilities in both Independence, KS and Columbus, GA. Even better, I’m sure the audience will be cordial about being forced to listen to a boring newbie lecture them about how not to die. Hurray for humiliating and senseless opportunities!
As much as I’d like to brag of my headstrong independence in days gone by, this year is really the first time I’m celebrating Thanksgiving as an autonomous attendee at the family festivities. Up until now I’ve come home from college, and traveled to where the family was attending dinner with the ‘rents and little bro. This year, it’s a straight shot from south Wichita to grandma’s house I go. Many shallow water crevasses will be traversed, but it’s Kansas, so I doubt I’ll travel through anything truly resembling a forest.
There are a lot of new unwritten rules I need to get used to. I, myself, need to bring a consumable food item, and will be called upon to be a true conversationalist. Politeness and cordiality are not my strong suit, and no one in my family seems to understand or appreciate my brand of wit.
Now If you’ll pardon me, I need to learn how to bake.
Have you yet discovered the overwhelming awesomeness of GarageBand.com?
I have also sold out my computer geek soul; I won't divulge my sins until they're fully atoned for. Suffice to say, I'm a sucker for 18-month free financing.
I'm calling it right here and right now, Aaron Sorkin's new show, Studio 7 on the Sunset Strip, premiering in the fall of next year, will be the absolute shiznit. Abso-freak'n-loutely shiz-tastic. Remember this when it gets 345 Emmy's in two years.
Oh you know I did it
It's over and I feel fine
Nothing you could say is gonna change my mind
Waiting and I wait at the longest night
Nothing like the taste to sweet decline
I was down, I fell, I fell so fast
Dropping like the grains in an hourglass
Never say forever cause nothing last
Dancing with the thorns of my buried past
Nevermind there's nothing I can do
Bet your life there's something killing you
It's a shame we have to die my dear
No ones getting out of here, alive
This time
What a way to go, they have no fear
No ones getting out of here, alive
This time
Finished, I'm getting you off my chest
Made you come clean in a dirty dress
A promise is a promise you kept in check
Heart across a heart that beats it's best
Take a good hard look for the very last time
The very last one in a very long line
Only took a second to say goodbye
Then the pleasure 'bout the pleasure's
been mine, all mine
Ain't no way, DOA
Ain't no way, DOA
It's a shame we have to disappear
No ones getting out of here, alive
This time
-Foo Fighters, DOA from the aforementioned Album, In Your Honor
There is no conspiracy; the world is not against you. The reason gas prices were high wasn’t greedy corporations hanging around in their corporation buildings being corporation-y. Supply and demand, fundamental economics, and the invisible hand, there is a reason these tenants have lived in economic textbooks for centuries.
In a free market, “price gouging” is impossible. In our country, the only place it’s possible is state-sanctioned monopolized utilities, where the number of competitors for essential services is artificially set at 1. But if you really want to complain about some people making more money selling the same thing than they were a little bit ago, you need to concentrate on the price drops in volatile markets, not price jumps. Why does it take 2 months for prices to drop after a temporary disruption in supply, when it only takes 2 days to jump to those heights?
And if your still pissed because your 90 minute commute to work costs you more money, calm down and look at the numbers that actually matter, the percentages. Percentages, rates, and ratios are everything in economics; the raw numbers mean nothing. Conoco had a 7.7% profit margin. That’s chicken feed, that’s abysmal, that’s laughable in the world of business. They post 7.7% and get demonized as price gouging warlords? Speaking from experience, aerospace companies are more than double that. DOUBLE! But nobody speaks up on behalf of those who need airplanes.
I’m frustrated at you unaware sense of being, but that’s not what prompted this tirade.
I’m pissed because the ‘leaders’ of our country feel it necessary to demonize companies for the essential business practice of price flexibility. I cannot comprehend that a group of educated people could say things like this. It’s pandering to the lowest common denominator among us, and it’s beneath anyone who truly desires to lead. I feel a systematic rant coming on, I’ll postpone it for now, but for the time being I can’t help but wondering…
What’s worse: Being ignorant or pretending to be?
At the gentle supplication of dear friends, I offer another humble post. Most of you won't like it though, because it's neither personal, nor witty. Come to think of it, I don't even like it; but the days of the calendar keep a turning, and I might as well try to foster honest discussion.
If social security benefits are subject to cost-of-living adjustments, why can't eligibility age be tied to life expectancy? The only explanation I can come up with is that in general, the quality of life between death and 5 years prior has decreased. But we already have disability programs to handle those unable to work, so I'm not sure this is a valid claim.
I'm a reasonably smart guy with a rather keen wide-angle lens, and I can't think of a reason this shouldn't be done. So think about it right now, and let me know, what haven't I thought of yet? Why can't this be done, why shouldn't it be? The comments section is there for a reason, let us think out loud.
Now more than ever, Fridays put an extra kick in my step. Friday afternoon get me reminiscing. They remind me of porch’n it at Triangle with a nice, cold, not-One; enjoying being a kid.
Those were the days before Roskam and Hale and all that was the suck. As underclassmen the world is easier on you, and Fridays are a little sweeter. Everything is better on Fridays.
For whatever reason, I get the same feeling on Friday afternoons, even though I'm at work and not porch’n it with anything resembling a One.
Official Pedestrian Phrase Counter: 4, collect ‘em all!
Okay, now that I’ve gotten the requisite 8 hours and 42 minutes of sleep, had my breakfast, and enjoyed another day without an alarm clock, I’m ready to dispense wit and wisdom as I see fit.
A few notes about the article today:
I seem to have fallen victim to the ol’ literary mechanism of the wraparound, beginning and ending a particular piece with a related reference, thus leaving the impression of coherence without the actual toil of writing it. I’d go off on a scholarly tangent about the decline of modern writing if neither my four favorite writers nor I had frequented said mechanism on numerous occasions. That, and based on my own hackery of the english language, I've lost the right to critique the written word.
I’m apparently the only blogger in Wichita with a top-level domain and the only one who jump the bandwagon before last Tuesday. I don't even think that I'm an early adopter, when I got in the game 4 years ago tons of people already had blogs.
Have you seen this dude’s eyes? I think my soul is on fire.
I feel a bit dirty about being labeled a ‘Wichita’ blogger. Sure I live here, and will likely continue to do so for at least a few years, but I sure don’t feel local after only being here for five months. I didn’t feel local in Lawrence either, but we can chock that one up to hippy detestation, and sorority girl indifference. Come to think of it, I’m not sure I felt local about my childhood home of 16 years, the bustling metropolis of Wamego. So maybe it’s me.
Since old people still don’t understand this fancy ‘inter-web’ thing, don’t you think it’s a bit early to drop the obligatory “web log = blog” explanation in traditional media? If you move to quickly with the pop culture to mainstream nomenclature, anybody without a TiVo Season Pass of MTV News will just think you’re making up words to mess with them.
“Technorati estimates there are more than 15 million blogs in the United States, and it expects the number to double every five months.”
From the man who’s a veteran of many an Internet fad, let me tell you this: The only thing that happens more frequently than a new blog popping up, is a new blogger giving up when they realize nobody cares.
And finally:
I knew this article was coming for like a month, but still couldn’t manage to update my pathetically broken link fest, visually represented by the side bar. Seriously, my 100 things section hasn’t been updated in like 2 years. In the words of the prophet, “That is Suck.”
The aforementioned article is in today's Eagle, on the front page on the inaugural section "WichiTalk", actually not to bad of a name considering the even cornier alternatives. I have yet to read the article, and I'm tired so we'll just have to wait and see what masterful wit I dispense on the yearning masses of Eagle readers that will most surely follow.
Profession media representatives for TOG will be available at the 10:30 morning briefing for a few question after a brief written statement has been leaked to the AP and Reuters 45-minutes prior. By the Way, I got season 4 of The West Wing on a series of digital video disks this weekend, it doesn't show does it?
That's a full lid.
I've read the thing, which is more than can be said for the first round of inexorable abrogates whining about not getting to deduct the faux interest on their 900,000 dollar homes. The ideals behind the tax system are unprincipled, and amoral immortality is not something to hold in high regard. A small step forward is any step forward, and something with intensions and methods as simple as this is the legitimate realm of government.
...and do it now.
It might seem to be the low point in a troubled presidency, and surely it is, but it is also more than that. I think we’re reached the inflection point in the progress of our nation. Simple peering through the looking glass of the American political landscape won’t indicate the austerity of the situation. Without the fundamental understanding of what hinges on the proceedings of this president, a drab reality is likely the fate of our discourse.
Orthodox political thinking at this point will yield one of two possible results. A stagnant attempt at treading water, slowly playing damage control with the number and power slowly and unstably decline. –Or—A complete abandonment of the president’s agenda by the American electorate, free fall and chaos, when it all level out in 3 years, the president will find himself hanging out the Jimmy Carter as the end of term governmental hall monitor. Either way, he’s legacy becomes that of a bumbling guy who tried to play cowboy with paying the dues of independence, of a man who stumbled his way into a mandate for blood, and forgot that Slim Pickens was the first casualty at end of the world.
But there is a third option:
Walk out on the house of your master and embrace what you’ve abandoned years before. Use the powers granted you by Article 1 Section 7 of the Constitution, and use it to curb the growth of that which constricts the breath of your citizenry. After freeing your fellow man from the worst of all things, allow him to experience the best. Be principled is all areas, not just in matters of creed.
THAT would be real leadership, to humbly accept the imperfections of self and govern on principle. But it won’t happen, in part because this president is smarter than he’s known as, but less intelligent. He may possess the literary ability to decipher my writing, but not the foresight to understand why it’s even an option.