Combat Barbie: Complete With Butt-Kicking Action

I’ve always thought that British people were a little weird. For one thing, they voluntarily choose to live in a miserable, cold, rainy country. Now, I will admit that I know very little about England. In fact, I had no idea where England was until I looked them up on Google Maps (did you know that they are actually on an island?). But every once in awhile a story comes along that reminds me why these people used to rule the entire world. Like this one.

Now I love this story for a lot of reasons. I’ve never been one of those guys who thought that only straight white males should be allowed in the army. When it comes to getting shot at by lunatics, I believe in equal opportunity, so I have no problem with women in the army. In fact, I prefer that women who know how to handle guns be sent as far away from me as possible. I also think it is twice as demoralizing for a guy who believes women are second class citizens to be shot at by a woman holding automatic assault weapons and hair straighteners.

But what makes this story different is that this girl Katrina is ridiculously hot. I mean she is a beauty queen and a lingerie model and she still is choosing to serve in Iraq. On the other hand, most beauty queens couldn’t find Iraq on a map (and half of them probably couldn’t spell “map”). Of course technically, she was the runner-up to be Miss England, but the winner beat the crap out of another beauty queen at a bar (apparently one of the events in an English beauty pageant is a pub brawl) and so was asked to step down. So Katrina will be going to the Miss Universe pageant in December even while remaining in the army.

What is also interesting is how she ended up in the army. Her brother just dared her to sign up for the army, saying she couldn’t pull it off. So the next thing you know, she shows up at training camp in heels and fake eyelashes, earning her the nickname “Combat Barbie.” Am I the only one who thinks this sounds like a blend between G.I Jane and Legally Blonde? (aw dammit I just admitted to watching both of those movies). I tried to dare my sister to do the same thing, but if you have ever seen my sister, then you would know that she has about the same chance of getting into the army as Michael J. Fox does of becoming a brain surgeon. The recoil from the gun alone would fly her back 100 yards.

Of course, I’m sure that Katrina faces a lot less resentment than those movie characters did. Nothing boosts “army morale” by having a supermodel walking around all day. Besides, I bet it serves as good motivation; nobody wants to be the guy who lost to the lingerie model in the obstacle course. I always find it funny when old, irritating actors like Sean Penn go over to Iraq thinking they are boosting the spirits of the troops. Sean Penn is thinking “Boy, these soldiers must be so happy to see that I, a celebrity, have taken time out of my busy schedule to fly here and shake some hands and sign autographs and get great publicity.” The soldiers are probably thinking “What an arrogant a**hole, riding here in his private jet because he thinks he is doing us such a great favor by merely showing up for five minutes.”

The greatest thing about this story though is that this girl is actually a great soldier (which, if you’ve ever made a woman angry, doesn’t surprise you). She was awarded a medal for disarming a prisoner with her bare hands after he managed to get two rifles. She was then promoted to a Lance Corporal, whatever that means. I never could remember all these darn army ranks. I think the army should really take advantage of her to enlist new recruits and curry favor for the war. Imagine the possibilities. She could appear in bra ads with slogans like “Support Our Troops,” “I Got Your WMDs Right Here,” “It’s DD-Day” and “got milk?” (okay maybe that last one doesn’t fit but I ran out of puns).

Anyway, the army gave her a few months leave, and she is preparing for her run at Miss Universe, though she has pledged to remain in the army even if she wins. All kidding aside, I really do hope she wins. After Miss California and Miss South Carolina, I’m tired of blonde bimbo beauty queens. This girl not only said she was going to strive for world peace, she went out and did something about it and shot at people to get it. I think she would be a great role model, and with her feel-good story and feel-good looks (does that even make sense?) she might have a chance. Plus I heard she is going to launch grenades at dissenting judges for her talent section.

Thar She Blows! (Wait, That Sounds Dirty)

So this past weekend me and two friends were walking to get lunch in the middle of a snowstorm that would have killed a herd of wooly mammoths. About twenty feet from the restaurant, we happened to run into several environmental activists. Of course, by “ran into” I mean that this crazy girl ran at us and just sort of started to yell at us and gesture frantically and point at us in a threatening manner with her clipboard.

She explained that she was from a group called Green Peace. Now, I assume that this is a very popular group in Boulder simply because a bunch of them signed up thinking that it somehow involved either marijuana or Heinekens. Sadly, that is not what this girl wanted to talk to us about. She then began to rant on about how Barack Obama wanted to start whaling again and all of the poor whales are going to die. This, as she made very clear, was unacceptable. Once she figured out I was from Hawaii (I’m not sure what gave me away, but it could have been the fact that I was wearing slippers and shorts in a blizzard or that my shirt said “HAWAII FIRE DEPARTMENT” in big letters across it), she attempted to use me as an example. No, not of whales you jerk; of people who presumably love whales.

Then came the part that all three of us knew was coming. “How can we save the whales” you ask? Apparently by giving them money. That’s right, by giving them money every month you can personally save a whale. Maybe you get a picture of the whale you saved and you can write it letters and everything. Now we of course politely told this girl that while we love the Earth as much as the next apathetic SUV-driving citizen, we are college students and we barely have enough money for ourselves, much less whales.

Now normally at this point, these environmentalist people just give you a sad face, but let you go on your way. But apparently this girl did not read that chapter of the guide book, because she then started to try and make us change our minds. Of course she got off on the wrong foot right off the bat, because she suggested in a condescending tone of voice that we should give up our beer money every month to save the whales. This offended me; who is she to assume that we drink? Haha I’m just kidding we weren’t offended. Amused would probably be a better word. She might as well have asked us to shoot ourselves so they could give our hearts to transplant patients.

She then tried to guilt us into signing up. She told us how we were the first people that had stopped to listen to them all day, and they were beginning to get demoralized. I wanted to tell her that maybe the reason nobody was stopping was that they were standing outside in a blizzard. I took a look around and saw about three people outside. She probably would have had more success recruiting someplace with more people walking about, like the moon.

Now, we are standing out in this weather the whole time this crazy chick is rambling on about whales. There was now about three inches of snow on our heads, and we still had not eaten. So in the politest way we could, we walked away in mid-sentence. Or at least two of us did; the guy she was making eye-contact at that particular moment was stuck there for a little while longer. This is what we call the “buddy system,” always being with somebody who gets the short end of the stick instead of you.

Anyway, several days later while I was watching Obama sign the health care bill into law, I remembered what the girl had said about Obama legalizing whaling (and I’m almost 100 percent sure that I was the only person who has ever thought about whales while watching C-SPAN). So I looked it up and as I expected, she was absolutely right about Obama wanting to legalize whaling. Except for the “Obama” part. There is someone who wants to legalize whaling: the whalers (surprise!). But Obama has not introduced any such bill. Even if he did, I’m not sure how I would feel. I mean, the girl was right that as someone from Hawaii, I have seen my fair share of whales. But I don’t know if I would go as far as she did and call them “gorgeous creatures” (I reserve that type of distinction for myself and Megan Fox). I mean, I can’t eat them so I don’t love them, and they can’t eat me, so I don’t hate them. As far as whales go I’m an emphatic “Ehhh.”

Except for Free Willy. Free Willy was one of my favorite movies growing up as a kid (and apparently they are coming out with a fourth one). I used to always watch it with my sister at my grandmother’s house. Of course we also used to have a National Geographic video on how they viciously eat seals (although apparently that’s not all they eat). But regardless I like killer whales so much I almost considered signing up to help save the whales. But then I remembered that killer whales are not actually whales, they are orcas. So I didn’t sign up. Anyways, speaking of black and white things that die in amusement parks, I leave you with Michael Jackson’s music video for Free Willy. Enjoy, and feel free to donate your beer money to me. Mine mysteriously disappeared.

Hallelujah Health Care!

As I’m sure you have heard by now, the big news is that yesterday, the new health care bill passed the House and is coming very close to being enacted. I think. The whole process of bills was always very confusing to me, maybe because my only experience with them was that darn School House Rock song that I don’t really remember. I think it went something like “conjunction junction, what’s your function.” For all I know, the only thing they voted on yesterday was what font they wanted the bill printed in. But judging by the way people are reacting, this vote seems to be a big step in finally getting this health care reform. This is a good thing, because frankly we need to get this whole thing over with so the media can move on to covering something important, like Jennifer Love Hewitt’s love life.

Now this whole thing was a big surprise to me since I assumed that, like me, Congress was on spring break and was spending their entire day watching basketball and NCIS reruns. But unlike me, these legislators not only managed to get off of their couches but also worked to pass a bill that appeared to have a blunt’s chance in Boulder of passing. It really was a remarkable display of non-partisan cooperation. Of course, by “non-partisan cooperation,” I mean “Democratic gang-rape.” None of the Republicans in the House voted yes on the bill, but the Democrats had enough numbers to overcome that.

But enough about how the bill was passed, let’s focus on what is truly important: how this reform affects you. By “you” I mean “me.” I don’t really care about you. Anyway, luckily for those of you who don’t understand health care, I happen to be an expert on the subject. My qualifications include knowing the Pepto Bismol song by heart and once diagnosing myself in a doctor’s office (“hey doc, I think the problem is that there is a knife sticking out of my foot”). So I’m going to make health care easy to understand by completely making up facts and using inappropriate metaphors and puns.

Now there was a time was a time when there was no such thing as health care (if you live in Africa, that time was two minutes ago). To demonstrate, we finally bring back our cavemen Wog and Oog.

Wog: So what seems to be the problem?

Oog: I think I have a cold sore.

Wog: I’m sorry to say we don’t yet have a cure and you’re going to die. But we can make your death as quick and painless as possible.

Oog: How?

Wog: We are going to hit you over the head repeatedly with a club until you die.

So things have gotten a little better since those days (doctors these days use axes), but there are still a lot of people in this country who are uninsured. This health care reform will give health insurance to 32 million uninsured Americans and make health insurance mandatory. Of course, all of this money has to come from somewhere and many high income people are complaining that it will end up being them. To them I say, “HAHA nanny-nanny boo-boo.” Because if there is anything that makes me happier than watching rich people suffer, I sure as heck haven’t found it yet.

Another part of the reform is that insurance companies can no longer cancel or deny policies to people with preexisting health conditions. This only makes sense to me. I mean sure, a diabetic person may have a higher risk of health problems than a healthy young man in his twenties. But the odds of that healthy young man getting hit by a bus tomorrow are probably greater since the diabetic had his foot amputated and can no longer walk.

Speaking of healthy young men, I should also benefit from this reform. The new plan would allow unmarried people up to 26 to remain under their parents’ insurance as long if they don’t have a job that offers them insurance. Why unmarried? Probably because the insurance companies know that marrying women is one of the biggest health risks to guys. I’ve seen CSI; if the husbands have any sort of life insurance, the second they piss their wives off BAM they’re dead.

Of course all of these benefits are nothing compared to the person who was truly saved by this vote: Barack Obama. Now as a fellow Hawaiian, I like the guy, even if his bracket sucked (I mean, come on; Kansas?). But even I have to admit that he was taking some heat for failing to really change anything aside from the oval office furniture. At least now he can hang his hat on the first health care reform since the 60’s. Then again, I would avoid doing anything that hasn’t been done since the 60’s. I’m pretty sure there was a good reason for stopping most of the things that went on in the 60’s other than The Who.

Anyway, at least this is a step in the right direction. Or the wrong direction. At least we are walking somewhere as opposed to standing there and looking confused like a Brit in a dentist’s office. Only time will tell whether or not we’ve taken a step towards happiness or Candianness. Speaking of which, I hope this free health care means I can finally get a Canadian doctor to look at this raccoon that has been clamped to my foot for the past three days. It’s starting to look infected.

A Method to the March Madness

March is one of my favorite months. It has the best holiday in St. Patrick’s Day (really, can you get an better than a holiday that celebrates drinking and being Irish?) and the weather begins to get better. But most importantly, March is when one of the greatest sporting events known to mankind takes place: the Iditarod Dog-Sled Race.

I was just joking of course. Dog-sledding combines three of my least favorite things in the world: snow, dogs, and moving fast, so needless to say the very concept of dog-sledding offends me. I was actually talking about March Madness. For those of you who might not know what March Madness is (cough, cough, women), March Madness is the tournament that determines men’s college basketball champion every year. 64 teams compete in a single elimination tournament that goes on over the course of three weeks. This means that the national champion is determined by actual games, whereas the college football champion is largely determined by some sort of mystical entity called the BCS, which takes into account a team’s record, voter opinions, the alignment of Saturn, the migration patterns of Maine lobsters, and Liza Minnelli’s mood every morning to determine who gets to play for the title.

But that isn’t the only thing that makes the tournament so wonderful. During the first couple of rounds, there are up to 32 games to be played in a day. This means a lot of basketball games to watch, which takes time away from unproductive and unpleasant tasks, like work. And not only do we get hours upon hours of games, but they are always exciting. That’s because if a game becomes boring, the station simply switches to a more entertaining game. This is good, because we really don’t need to see some Ivy League school get blasted by a bunch of guys who have servants to take their exams for them.

And I haven’t even gotten to the best part of March Madness: the brackets. It’s tradition to fill out a bracket for the tournament, predicting the winners of each game. This is great, since normally gambling on sports is frowned upon (or at least that’s what they said when my friend and I tried to get an AYSO sports book going). But this is the one time of the year when everybody fills out a bracket, even people who know as much about basketball as French women know about shaving.

The crazy thing is that the tournament is so unpredictable that often the people who know the least about basketball often end up making good picks. Everybody has their own strategy for picking games. In fact, a lot of people I’ve talked to actually choose based on the school’s mascots. However, this can get tricky, since it is possible this year that the Minnesota Gophers meet the Richmond Spiders. I hate spiders, and I’m not exactly sure if I’ve ever had to think about how I feel about gophers. Also, what if the Syracuse Orange meat the North Texas Mean Green? They should make a law against giving your school a lame mascot, and a color is definitely a lame mascot. And don’t even get me started on what would happen if the Villanova Wildcats meet the Kansas State Wildcats, with the winner then meeting the Kentucky Wildcats (and yes, this is a possible scenario).

So you should follow my advice, because I am very consistent. The teams I pick are great. The only problem they have is they tend not to score as many points as the other team. My brackets normally tank worse than Nicholas Cage movies. This might be because I have a hard time staying objective. For instance, in the first round Florida plays Brigham Young University. I don’t really like BYU because they used to beat up Hawaii in football and I don’t really get Mormonism. (I mean, being married to one woman is stressful enough, but who is stupid enough to marry five? And they have to do this without the help of drugs). But I hate the University of Florida because Tim Tebow is the spawn of the devil. So for the Florida-BYU game I picked Penn State, because I don’t want either team to win. It’s these types of decisions that normally do me in, seeing as it will be hard for Penn State to win a game they technically are not involved in.

So I’ve filled out a bracket with a Final Four of Syracuse, Duke, Kansas and Kentucky, with Kentucky beating Syracuse in the final. But that probably won’t happen. I am more likely to steal a leprechaun’s pot of gold. Although come to think of it, I already did that today. But I might want to let him go, because there’s an amber alert out for an Irish kid who looks a lot like the leprechaun I have locked in the basement.

Lending A Helping High

Now I know that I complain a lot about the city where I currently live, Boulder, Colorado. But I still hold out hope that this town is actually filled with good-natured, law-abiding citizens who are simply ecologically friendly and have an undeserved bad reputation. Then a story comes along and reminds me that most of the people in this town are dirty hippies who worked hard to earn that reputation. This is one of those stories.

But believe it or not, this story has several signs of hope for the city of Boulder. For one thing, if the average Boulderite found a two-pound bag of weed, the last thing they would do is call the cops. This is a scientific fact, as the numbers from a very comprehensive survey I did of the three people around me when I read this article prove. When I asked them if they would have reported the find, the consensus was “F**k no!” Most likely, the lucky Boulderite would seclude themselves in their room with nothing but a Pink Floyd CD, the Wizard of Oz, and fifteen pepperoni pizzas and emerge a week later claiming he knows how to solve health care and who killed JFK. Also, it is very possible that this person simply thought that they were making a charitable donation. I mean, the street value of that pot was $8000, which is a lot more money than most charities get from people. In this person’s defense, they probably assumed (possibly correctly) that pot keeps people warmer than coats.

The part of this story that I can’t believe is that the police are actually trying to find the owner so they can return it to them if they have a legal right to have it. Now, I’m not a doctor, but for a person to have two pounds of medical marijuana, they better have a tumor the size of a large beagle on their forehead. I bet this is awkward for police, who are used to taking people’s drugs away, not giving them back. I wonder if they will do one of those things that they do in supermarkets for stupid kids that get lost.

PA: “Will the owner of the two-pound bag of Maui Wowie please report to the lost and found.”

Pot use in Boulder is sort of like polygamy in Utah and inbreeding in the south; sure it’s illegal, but law enforcement just let it slide. I mean, I picked up an issue of a local paper (I won’t say which but I will say that it is in Boulder and it comes out Weekly). I then realized that the entire back page was ads for either medical marijuana or marijuana paraphernalia. Now, I’m willing to bet the odds of a person with a painful terminal illness that would qualify for medical marijuana being enrolled in a four-year university are about as good as me winning America’s Next Top Model. (Not that I don’t have the looks, but I can’t walk in high heels. Don’t ask why I know that).

I’m sure that you have already assumed that the entire population of Boulder is a bunch of stoners. This is unfairly pigeon-holing us. We are much more than a bunch of pot-heads. For instance, we also drink way too much. And we’re perverts. And we beat people up late at night. The sad thing is that when I read that the assailant was described as a “Pacific Islander,” who was fat and ugly, the first thought that came to my mind was “What was I doing last night?” At that moment, my roommate Chris simply appeared in the doorway with a disapproving frown and simply said “Why did you do it?” Now before you bust down my door and make a citizen’s arrest, I took a look at the sketch and of course it wasn’t me. My sketch looks a little more like this (okay fine, more like this). Then again, you could be this guy. That is what we call hiding in plain sight.

As for the girl on the roof, the real mystery is how someone wasted enough to fall off a roof got on a roof in the first place. I also like how the “detectives” concluded that the girl had probably drank “large quantities of alcohol.” Now if that isn’t fine detective work I don’t know what is, because I would have never guessed this girl was drinking; I figured all women were just clumsy retards (that was sarcasm by the way ladies, but don’t worry the sexist comments are coming). This is just further proof that we should never let a woman do a man’s work. And yes, doing stupid stunts drunk is a man thing. When men do it, they don’t go to the hospital. They dust themselves off, shrug off the pain, continue drinking to the applause of his fellow drunken male admirers, and then die the next morning of massive internal bleeding and alcohol poisoning. The good thing is that in the off chance that he survives the fall, he will probably be prescribed medical marijuana.

Let's Sue Talking Babies

There are some stories that just simply inspire you and remind you why we live in the greatest country in the world populated by a hard-working, diverse, tolerant people living out the American dream. This is not one of those stories. This instead is a story of everything that is wrong with America. This is a story involving Lindsay Lohan.

So basically, the story is that Lindsay Lohan is suing e*Trade over one of their baby ads. The milk-aholic baby in the ad, as you heard, is named Lindsay. According to Lohan’s lawyer, Lohan has one-name iconic status, like Cher or Madonna and that the commercial purposely chose the name to portray her lifestyle. Now the first thing that I did when I heard this was laugh hysterically. Then when I realized that this was a factual story, I began to cry. And this was before I saw that Lohan is seeking $100 million in damages.

Anyone who thinks she will win is clearly using almost as many drugs as Lindsay. The fact that some lawyer is actually doing this case is proof lawyers are cold, heartless beings robots powered by money. I mean, don’t tell me these people can go to school for ten years and still take this case unless they traded their souls for new suits. Just look at their argument. It is one thing to claim that a name like Madonna or Cher or Angelina is unique enough that it is instantly recognizable. But Lindsay? It’s one of those forgettable names that you hear at least three times in a roll call in a lecture hall. I mean my sister is named Lindsey, which might explain why I always forget what her name is and normally just refer to her as “girl”. And yes, if Lohan somehow wins this case, I am going to also sue e*Trade on behalf of my sister with the sincere intention of making a lot of money off of her.

If I were e*Trade my other argument would be that considering Lohan is a ten pound bag of bones and cocaine, I wouldn’t want her to be associated with my product unless I was selling herpes medication. I would rather have a dead whale covered in large mutant ticks be my spokesman than Lindsay Lohan, so I definitely wouldn’t have slipped her name into a commercial hoping people would say “Hey I associate Lindsay Lohan with sound financial decision making! I’ll go to e*Trade now!” (then again, I don’t associate babies with sound financial decisions either).

That brings us to the only mistake that e*Trade really is guilty of: replacing the baby in the ads. I used to like the old e*Trade baby, but this new one is just not cute and his voice is weird. There are some babies you want to hug, and then there are babies you want to punt off a bridge. Oh relax, I was just exaggerating. I don’t punt babies, just small dogs. Unless of course I was given advance notice that the baby might grow up to be Justin Bieber. The folks at e*Trade should take this as an omen to go back to the original baby. It’s rare that ad people come up with a clever ad campaign, so when you do you need to hang on to it as long as you can because advertising people as a general rule are retarded. I mean, Subway is still playing that stupid “$5 footlong” song even though it was irritating when it came out and it is still irritating. (By the way, look how long these guys think a foot is when they put their hands up. I just hope they aren’t real construction workers, or a building somewhere is going to fall down real soon).

But back to Lindsay Lohan. Now, I make fun of Lohan a lot because she is a alcoholic, drug-using, partying, sexually confused slut whose body and career are falling apart faster than Kirstie Alley’s new diet plan. But I am old enough to remember when she used to be all cute and innocent and was supposed to be the next big thing. I mean, who didn’t love the Parent Trap? By the way, that movie is cursed. First Lohan’s life goes down the gutter, then Natasha Richardson dies of a freak skiing accident, and now numerous reports indicate that Dennis Quaid suffers from the incurable condition of being Dennis Quaid.

But it truly is sad to see someone waste all of this opportunity and potential that could have been used on someone else, like me. Unfortunately, beauty and brains rarely go hand in hand as they do with me (by that I mean I lack both in equal proportions). Then again, we were saying the same thing about Britney Spears a few years ago, and while she’s not back to the star she used to be, at least she’s not the laughingstock of America anymore. So I honestly hope that Lindsay pulls her life together. Because Miley Cyrus is almost 18, and frankly we need a new train wreck to take pictures of.

I Wish I Were an Oscar Wiener

Now I told myself I wouldn’t write on last night’s Oscars, but I almost never keep my promises. Besides, I’m bored and there were actually several interesting things that happened at last night’s Oscars. Also, this is the first Academy Awards show I’ve actually ever tried to watch. Now, ABC said that this year they were going to “reboot” the Oscar format, since apparently people have begun to realize that all these things used to be was celebrities talking about their favorite subject: themselves.

And ABC did revamp the Oscars; they made them a lot longer. I’m guessing that James Cameron also directed the show, because this thing felt longer than Titanic and Avatar combined. I honestly did try to watch the whole thing through, but Saving Private Ryan was also on TV at the same time. Watching the first twenty minutes reminded me of how good that movie was, which reminded me that it somehow did not win an Oscar, which reminded me why the Academy is stupid, which reminded me why I normally don’t watch the Oscars. But I persevered and watched probably 25 percent of the Oscars (which may actually still be going on). So for those of you that missed it, here comes a factual approximation of what may or may not have happened while I may or may not have been watching.

Now there were some positive aspects to this year’s Oscars. For starters, Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin were actually funny as the hosts. They actually bothered to make fun of celebrities, which can be hard since many of these people have no sense of humor when it comes to themselves (also, many of them are stupid or in Penelope Cruz’s case, don’t speak even speak English). Also, they did a funny bit on Paranormal Activity, which I enjoyed because I personally thought that movie was a pile of crap (and apparently cost less to produce). I actually enjoyed Baldwin and Martin’s version, mainly because it was shorter. The other thing I liked about the Oscars is that they showed multiple shots of whoever this is. Apparently she was in Twilight. This confuses me, because if someone that looked like that was walking around during Twilight I think I would have remembered (and probably vomited a lot less). Instead, all I remember are these two retards.

Then there were the strange parts of the show. For one thing, they kept randomly cutting to footage of George Clooney, as if the camera director was a 40-year-old lonely woman. We get it; you all think that George Clooney is gorgeous, but you need to get over it because this is who he is dating, so you don’t have a chance and you need to move on. Also, there was a very Kanye-esque like moment during one of the categories that I didn’t care about, and thus did not watch. And as if the celebrities needed their egos to be pumped up even further, this year every person nominated for an acting award had another actor stand on stage for five minutes and talk about how fabulous that actor was. By the end of the night, these celebrities had so much hot air blown up their asses Meryl Streep actually floated away. And just when you thought things couldn’t get worse, they let my arch-nemesis Sean Penn on stage where he mumbled about something incoherently for five minutes.

Speaking of idiots presenting things, a lot of people were talking about Ben Stiller coming out to present an award dressed as an avatar. It seems like every year, Ben Stiller pulls some sort of joke when he presents an Oscar. This is mainly because he sucks as an actor and is never nominated for an Oscar, which means he has to try and find away to get attention, like a five-year-old kid. He somehow managed to make the moment all about him even though he was presenting an award to someone else.

Speaking of Avatar, they were this year’s New York Yankees. They spent a lot of money, were the big favorites, their boss is an arrogant a**hole and when it came to the actual awards, they sucked. Avatar only got three Oscars, and one of them was for “Best Movie Containing Seven-Foot Tall Blue People.” Now, I watched Avatar and thought it was a very entertaining movie, but it wasn’t Oscar material. I mean, it was basically The Smurfs meets Fern Gully and Pocahontas. What made it even greater is that the winner of the Best Picture was Kathryn Bigelow for The Hurt Locker. Bigelow is James Cameron’s ex-wife, which I found very amusing. I mean normally when you piss off women you worry about them stabbing you or setting your house on fire, not stealing your movie awards.

Overall, I thought the awards actually went to all the right people. Sandra Bullock finally won something, and I like her because she is actually funny and humble, as her speech and this story both prove. The only thing I am surprised is that the big black girl from Precious didn’t beat Bullock. Not because I thought she was great. I actually didn’t even see the movie (I actually only saw three of the ten nominated movies actually), but Oprah liked this girl. An endorsement from Oprah pretty much guarantees you are going to win (how else can you explain Barack Obama?) and she is the most powerful force in the universe (don’t kid yourself God, you have nothing on Oprah). Normally what Oprah wants, Oprah gets, by any means necessary. Which means that Sandra Bullock better watch her blind side. Yes, I just made that pun and it was glorious and I deserve an Oscar for it and thus a fifteen minutes long rambling speech:

I would like to thank my family and friends for supporting me when nobody else thought that pun was funny because it wasn’t. I would once again like to thank this chick for showing up and as a fellow Oscar nominees you should call me. Lastly I would like to dedicate that pun to all of you who for some unknown reason have read to this point without changing the channel to watch Saving Private Ryan.

Long Arm of the Law

So on Monday night, me and my roommate Chris were up at 1 am trying to study for a philosophy midterm exam. Needless to say, I was studying for this exam by watching Sting music videos, and it just so happened that the ad before the video for “Fields of Gold” (favorite song ever by the way) was an ad for Chicken McNuggets. And we all know what happened next; desperate for those little bite-sized morsels of chicken-flavored Styrofoam and an excuse to stop not studying, I told Chris we should drive to McDonalds and go get some.

Five minutes later, we pull out of the Drive-Thru with twenty nuggets, fries, and happiness in a paper bag (I literally mean happiness; that was not a drug reference). It seemed like nothing could go wrong (aside from failing the midterm that is). This was a sign that everything was about to go horribly, terribly, Bieber-esquely wrong.

Now, at 30^th and Baseline, there is a no u-turn sign that everybody ignores. I mean everybody. When the Pope goes to this McDonalds he pulls a u-turn in the Pope-mobile (I’m assuming that is what he drives). It was one in the morning, and the road was empty, so we pulled the turn. As he is doing this, Chris jokingly comments “I hope there aren’t any cops around.” Of course the last time he said this to me while making an illegal turn, we saw a cop. So I jokingly told him not to jinx it. As most of you have already figured out, sure enough a cop car appears out of nowhere and pulls us over. Now, we assumed that once he figured out that neither of us were drunk or high he would let us go with a warning (although it’s harder than you think to convince someone you aren’t high when you have two pounds of chicken nuggets sitting on your lap at one in the morning). But instead, the cop gave Chris a $100 ticket. These are the same Boulder cops who every year let 10,000 people gather on a field to smoke pot.

So basically, we ordered $110 McNuggets. With our luck, I was half expecting to open the bag and find out they got our order wrong, at which point my head would have exploded thus releasing the hamster that lives in there (his name is Happy). I haven’t had a fast food experience this bad since I was walking back from Wendy’s and I was jumped by a herd of raccoons (flock?). For those of you who can’t understand why this is scary, clearly you have never encountered a pod of raccoons (gander?). Just one of those things is scary enough, much less an entire school of them (maybe it’s a pod?).

Now, this story illustrates several points. First, studying is bad. If I had just conceded I was going to fail this test and gone to sleep like I should have, none of this would have happened. Also, no matter how great he was with the Police, watching Sting music videos past midnight never leads to anything good. But most importantly, we need to remember whose fault this really is: the cops.

Now I’m not ragging on all cops. I’m sure that most of the cops out there are drug-busting, cat-grabbing, rapist-catching, gun-toting, hyphen-using, bad-ass defenders of the innocent. But then again, there are cops like these. Now, I’ll at least give them this: if I were in a drug lord’s house for nine hours, the Wii wouldn’t have been the first thing I would have gone for, if you get my drift. But still, we pay these guys to get drug dealers off the streets, not beat their high scores on Wii bowling. Also, look at the cop’s celebration at 16 seconds into the video. I don’t want guys who celebrate like that confronting heavily armed criminals; they would eat him alive.

Now let’s go to the other end of the spectrum, from cops who don’t take their job seriously enough to cops that want to shoot you. Now, I understand using tasers on dangerous criminals and drunken people, but a 76-year-old? Where was the guy going to go? He was on a tractor (and why do they drive tractors in parades in Wyoming?) and he’s 76 years old. I’m pretty sure the cops could have handled him without shocking him (and yes, these cops were later fired).

I mean, if cops were serious about stopping real crime and drug use, they should just watch a Denver Nuggets basketball game on TV. The Nuggets have a deal where Taco Bell offers four tacos for $1 if the team scores more than 100 points in a game. This is a very big deal for the Nugget’s two announcers, Chris Marlowe and Scott Hastings, who occasionally mention it.

Marlowe: And Carmelo scores! The score is tied at 12.

Hastings: Only 88 more points until tacos.

Later on…

Marlowe: Basket is good! Nuggets ahead 97-95.

Hastings: Someone should shoot a three so we can get tacos.

Marlowe: Billups drains a three! Nuggets win!

Hastings: TACOS!!!!!!!!

Now don’t tell me that these two just like tacos. They have the munchies. The other night, with the Nuggets up by 40 points, Hastings stopped talking about the game and just started giggling and talking about tacos. If the cops just checked under his table, they probably would have found a bong the size of a large dog. But no, instead of arresting stoned sports announcers, they are on empty roads ticketing students merely trying to get some study food. Then again, maybe they’re just trying to catch Hastings coming back high from the Taco Bell Drive Thru.

Cop: Sir, do you know why I pulled you over?

Hastings: TACOS!?!?!?!

Making Waves

I rarely pay attention to the news. For instance, it took me two days to realize there had been an earthquake in Haiti. It then took me another two days to figure out where Haiti was. But this past Saturday, when an 8.8 earthquake hit Chile, I was aware of it within about two minutes because the resulting tsunami was projected to slam into my home state of Hawaii. I knew this because my dad called me and woke me up to tell me this. Of course, before noon I rarely am able to comprehend simple sentences, so I went back to sleep. It wasn’t until I woke up about three hours later that I actually realized that “Holy s**t there’s a tsunami headed for Hawaii!”

At this point, I sat on my couch for the rest of the day watching CNN. Most of the coverage was about Chile, which I can understand. Most of the damage occurred there, and if you have ever seen Chile on a map, their country is so skinny that if their buildings fell over they either ended up in Argentina or the Pacific Ocean. I mean seriously; it looks like Argentina just had a phobia of the ocean and so they drew a line fifty feet from the beach and just said “yeah, that isn’t ours.”

JOKE TIME: So two blondes are getting ready to land a plane. The plane touches down and the pilot is instantly forced to bring the plane to a screeching halt. The pilot says “Wow, that sure was a short runway.” And the other blonde says “Yeah, but look how wide it is…”

Anyway, I was mainly watching the news for information about Hawaii. I mean, it can be a little unsettling hearing that a big wave is going to crash into your house, even if you aren’t currently in that house. Because there are other important things in that house that I can’t replace, like my sofa. Oh yeah, and family members too. Hawaii is not one of those places that get a lot of natural disaster scares (which is surprising when you consider that we live on an active volcano). I mean Kansas has tornados, San Francisco has earthquakes, New England has blizzards, Tokyo has Godzilla, and Oakland has the Raiders. So I was a bit freaked out, especially considering how people in Hawaii normally react to emergencies. So was everybody else apparently. There were people all over the internet who expressed their concern for Hawaii. It is nice to see that people can put aside their petty jealousy of people in Hawaii for a few seconds.

And from stories I’ve heard from my friends, it was quite an ordeal. First off, during tsunamis or tsunami drills (which happen once a month), a really loud, really annoying alarm goes off across the state. I mean, this thing wakes up dead people and pisses off the deaf, and it went off for the entire day. Then officials went and personally knocked on the doors of people in high risk areas and basically told them to get their s**t and get out. This is actually kind of funny, because the people who live in high risk areas (on the beach would be one) are either rich or tourists in hotels, neither of which is a group I am particularly fond of. So the thought of them being packed into school buses and evacuated to higher ground in their pajamas makes me happy.

Now a lot of the people I know, being the geniuses that they are, decided the best plan of action was to buy a plate lunch and go watch the tsunami. Now most of these people were high in the mountains watching from scenic points, and I have to be honest, I probably would have done the same thing. But there are idiots, and then there are people who swim on the beach during tsunami warnings, like this retard. I don’t care if you are a tourist and don’t know what is going on; when you see a nice beach in Hawaii empty you can assume one of five things is in the water: a giant shark, a swarm of jellyfish, untreated sewage, a snorkeling rapist, or a giant killer tidal wave (by the way, the “Snorkeling Rapists” would be a cool band name). Now, in this guy’s defense, getting to swim in Waikiki without stepping on five tourists everywhere you go is kind of neat. But still, when a 20-foot wave washes his white butt onto the freeway, I’m definitely not going to feel sorry for him. But at least he got a Facebook fan page out of it.

Luckily, the tsunami never came. It was just another one of those things in Hawaii that everybody thinks will be big but never really pans out, like Michelle Wie (who is actually born on the exact same day as yours truly). I figured that this tsunami was not going to be a big deal when my dad stopped texting me about sirens and waves and started asking me if I had bought him his crocs yet. Not that I am disappointed; I’m very grateful that this tsunami did not hit Hawaii. I mean, could you imagine how bad I would feel if I went back to my home in the mountains and found out that I now was the owner of a beach front property? I would be absolutely devastated.