Mad Science

I was talking the other day to Baddie and Midget about the classes they have this summer, when a thought occurred to me. They are taking two science classes during the summer, which is somehow more than I have taken in my entire college career (although one class is something called primate behavior, which apparently involves just watching videos of monkeys). Not that I am complaining mind you; not taking science is one of the reasons I became a journalism major.

The only real science classes I’ve taken were astronomy and geology. Sure, I took philosophy of science, but I am almost certain that doesn’t count. In the parts of the class I was awake for I only remember us arguing about what a chair was. Anyway, geology was my favorite science class, because all we would do is go out and look at rocks.

Professor: “Mitchell, what is this?”

Me: “That’s a rock.”

Professor: “Yes, but what kind of rock?”

Me: “A gray rock.”

I eventually learned to just answer “granite” all of the time on tests, including the name and date section. As you can see, science is not one of my strong suits, and it never has been. The part of my brain that most people must use for understanding science I think I use for remembering the lyrics to every single Eagles song. (Why is it that I can sing “Desperado” on demand but I still have trouble remembering what my own apartment number is?)

So science was always one of those subjects I dreaded in high school. For one thing, I have never understood the whole table of elements thing. I mean, none of the abbreviations make sense. The symbol for gold is Au, and the last time I checked, neither of those letters are actually in the word “gold.” It looks like somebody came up with the table while playing Scrabble drunk one night, and they started to run out of letter tiles. Also, not to be a nitpicker, but the table appears to be missing key elements, like cheese.

Plus, I never liked labs. Like every other science student in high school, I was made to dissect a frog. Now, I didn’t get all squeamish because I was cutting open a frog, but it was really confusing. We were supposed to identify all of the frog’s organs and determine whether or not it was male or female. But I think that our teacher should have returned our frog, because something was clearly wrong with it. On the diagram we were looking at, all of the organs were color coded with bright colors and in easy-to-find spots. The inside of our frog however was just a pile of gray muck, and it definitely didn’t have anything that helped me tell whether it was a male or a female. In the end I just guessed that it was a male, since only a male frog would have been stupid enough to end up dead in a jar of alcohol.

Speaking of biology, we need to do something about the whole animal class system. It’s way too confusing. For one thing, it tells me that spiders are not related to cockroaches, which is clearly not true, because they both live under my refrigerator together. So I propose a new classifying system with only five classes. First are humans. Then, anything that swims or lives in the water is now a “fish” (sharks, whales, hippos, Michael Phelps, lobsters). Anything that has less than two legs and more than four is now an “insect” (worms, spiders, snakes, lobsters). Anything that we can eat is called “food” (cows, pigs, onions, lobsters). Everything that doesn’t fit into those four categories is a “mammal” (elephants, lizards, certain birds).

Since we are on a roll here, I say we just completely do away with physics. This is one of those cases where ignorance is bliss (the other would be what goes on into Spam). I lived for 15 years without knowing why anything in the world happened, and I was completely fine. I thought that was why they came up with religion. But no, some people just couldn’t leave well enough alone and had to actually go find out why things happened. Take gravity for example. Whenever somebody used to ask “Why don’t you float off into space?” my answer was “Because I’m fat.” Now, it involves a whole bunch of math and quantum mechanics and apples or something.

See, this is where you can tell that scientists are not normal people. Isaac Newton would drop an apple off a building and ask “Why?” A normal guy would drop an apple off a building and instantly start looking for bigger things to drop off the building, like sofas. Newton tried to come up with theories about why objects at rest remain at rest. Normal guys would proceed to test that theory by remaining at rest, preferably on a sofa. Newton would look at a fire and wonder what chemical reaction were taking place. A normal guy sees a fire and starts to light things on fire, like sofas. (Pop quiz: Guess where I am sitting right now?)

So you can imagine how worried I am that my sister might go into science. But if she does, I have just one piece of advice I’ve gained in my extensive college science career: The answer is always “granite.”

Horny for Soccer

Now, I normally don’t like to write too much about one particular topic (unless that topic is how awesome I am). The world generally provides me enough stupidity to change it up, but I just have to write more about the World Cup, because a lot has happened in the first week of this thing.

First off, let’s just come right out and say it: watching soccer is bad enough without a swarm of locusts coming to wipe out mankind. I watch soccer to hear ridiculous British accents, not the inside of a goddam bee hive. Apparently these horns are called vuvuzelas by the locals and “irritating” by everybody else. Also, it takes away one of the greatest things about watching soccer, which is listening to thousands of people with blood-alcohol levels higher than their IQs chant weird songs and obscenities in foreign languages. Plus, the horns are constant. Sure, cowbells and thundersticks are irritating, but people only play those once in awhile on important plays. Whereas these things are going constantly with no rhyme or reason to them. I’m not exactly sure how that is even possible; there must be a lot of people in the stadium passing out from oxygen deprivation.

The FIFA considered banning these horns, but as with all foreign officials, they suddenly remembered that they have no testicles and decided not to. Now, they made up some lame excuse like “it’s part of their culture.” Really? I’ve never heard of these things before, and I doubt two dollar little pieces of plastic that were probably made by children in China can be considered “culture.” And if it is a tradition, then it is a stupid one. I bet if you blew that thing outside of the stadium you would immediately be eaten by lions (not because they are hungry, but just to shut them up). Besides, culture and tradition are overrated. Cannibalism and watching Ashton Kutcher movies is a culture in some places; that doesn’t make it okay.

That is just one of the reasons that I don’t think we should ever let South Africa host anything ever again. Another is that every soccer match comes on at about 2 in the morning. Okay, that may be exaggerating a little bit, but normally by the time I get up half of the games are done. My friends in Hawaii have yet to actually see any of the games, since they come on there before the sun is even up. It’s bad enough that people in Hawaii had to watch the NBA Finals Game 7 at 3 in the afternoon, but nobody is going to get up early just to watch soccer.

It really is too bad, because this has been an exciting World Cup start (at least by soccer standards). I’m mainly just happy because the French have not won a game yet. Also, the U.S has not been that bad and still has a chance to advance. Their first game against England was a tie, thanks to a blunder by the English goaltender on a save that nine out of ten third graders probably could have made (and let’s be honest, he will probably never be seen alive again).

Then, we fell behind 2-0 to Slovenia in our second game earlier today before staging one of the biggest come backs in soccer history to tie the game. Now, there were several things I got mad about in this game. First off, I’m not sure Slovenia is actually a country. I’ve never heard of it, and apparently neither has my spell-check. Second, we actually should have won, but the referee called off our third goal even though the replays show that if anything, the U.S was fouled. This just proves that the entire world is jealous of America and is trying everything they can to stop us from taking the last thing they can beat us at besides getting diseases. The ref is just lucky that this was the U.S he screwed and not some fanatical European country, or he would probably have been shot by now.

Now, the World Cup has not gone off without some hitches. For one thing, we have our first soccer related death. This story proves several things. First, you should never try to separate a man from his remote control, because he will fight to the death to keep it. Second, this is why religious shows are evil; they mind-control crazy people. Also, this just shows that women are crazy. I just hope that all you future wives out there remember this story the next time you try and make your husband stop watching sports and you are overwhelmed with crippling remorse. Then you should go get us some chips.

Anyway, dead people and blind refs aside, this World Cup has a chance to be a good one. We just need to do one thing, and I am reaching out to all of you who are going to these games. If the person next to you is blowing one of those stupid horns, punch them in the face. Unless it is a child. Then you should punch them in the stomach. If you oppose violence, stuff a hot dog into it. If everybody does their part, we can all watch the rest of the World Cup in peace. If not, then I might have to resort to watching gospel shows.

Mitchell Vs. Food

So somebody sent me this link today. It is about some wacko in India that claims he has not eaten or drank anything in 70 years. I’m not sure why he would want to do this. It could be possible he doesn’t like spicy food, and in India not eating spicy food leaves you with few options. Apparently they actually put him under observation for two weeks to try and prove his claim, and he (by all appearances) appeared to be completely fine.

Now I think we can all acknowledge that this guy is cheating somehow. He claims to be a yogi, whatever that is. Wikipedia says that a yogi is a “fictional bear who appears-” wait, that can’t be right. Oh well; this guy is some sort of monk or something. But frankly I don’t care if he is Yoda, nobody can go more than a week without eating or drinking. Forget what it does to your body, not eating and drinking starts to mess with your mind.

I would know. I am currently (against my better judgment) trying to lose weight. Mainly because I made a bet with a friend at the beginning of the year on who would lose more weight, and seeing as I have only started trying now, I might be a bit behind. And I really do not want to have to run naked through a candy store painted like an oompa loompa. And even if I did (which I don’t, I think) the restraining order would prevent me from doing so. Therefore, I have decided I have to get this whole weight loss thing into full gear.

So this means that in addition to resuming swimming (the only physical activity I have ever been decent at), I have tried to go on a diet. Now this is hard enough for me already, but I have been making it especially hard on myself. This is because my roommate and I like to watch the Travel Channel. For those of you who haven’t watched the Travel Channel in awhile, at some point they stopped doing shows about traveling and became the Food Network. Although to be honest, whenever I travel I ignore the sights and culture and prefer to just eat things, so I guess this is appropriate.

One of our favorite shows is called “Man vs. Food.” The show follows a guy named Adam Richmond as he goes around the country checking out restaurants and doing eating challenges. Now, I just want to know how people get jobs like this. Not only does he get to be on TV and travel the country, he gets to eat the best food in the country. Of course, this means that while I’m eating cereal and my roommate is eating what smells like spinach and tuna, we are watching this guy eat ribs and burgers that look like they dropped straight out of heaven. Watching this show while on a diet is the worst strategy since BP decided to drill just a little bit deeper (what’s the worst that can happen?).

Anyway, Chris and I got excited when we found out that Adam had come to Boulder, Co. for an episode that aired last night. Now, I have to be honest I was a bit confused when I found out he was coming to Boulder. Boulder is not exactly known for its great cuisine, unless you happen to be a horse. Most of the locals here spend most of their time eating things that were very recently in the ground (and by that I do not mean prairie dogs). Although when you think about it, for a town that smokes so much dope, you would think that there would be better pig out spots.

He somehow did manage to find some places that served good food, and Chris and I were taking careful notes. For instance, there was one place he visited that somehow puts bacon and sausage into the pancake and tops it with an egg and syrup. These things are called saddle bags, which sounds weird when you order. If I was a waiter and somebody told me they wanted my bacon saddle bags, I would get really self-conscious all of a sudden. Or flattered. I’m not real sure. But it is everything you want for breakfast all on one plate. The only way it could be more perfect was if Megan Fox served it to you while playing “Black Magic Woman” on the guitar.

At the end of the episode, Adam tried the Wing King challenge, which requires you to eat 50 wings in 30 minutes. Sadly he failed as dozens of stoned onlookers kept asking him “Hey man, you gonna finish that or can I have some?” I guess the only hard part about this guy’s job is the eating challenges he has to do. Now, I can eat a lot, but not as much as you would think a guy my size could. I’m fat mainly because I sleep 14 hours a day and spend the other 10 trying to move as little as possible. For instance, at the moment I want to eat something, but the fridge is at least ten feet away, so I’ve decided not to. Me and the yogi, we’ve got that in common: willpower.

The World Cup: Let's Kick Balls!

It’s time to break out the face paint and the beer, because it’s time for the World Cup! That’s right, the worldwide soccer tournament that happens every four years and probably involves more drinking and rioting in three weeks than the entire 19^th century (By the way, why is everything every four years? Why is never anything every three years? Or every eleven?) The World Cup is the greatest sporting event in the world, and frankly I don’t really care about it. Lesser people might be tempted to pretend they love and know soccer to sound sophisticated, but the last thing I want to be known for is being cultured.

I mean let’s be serious for a second here. I am a big a sports fan as there is, but I just never saw the appeal to international soccer. For one thing, there’s not enough offense in international soccer. They score goals about as often as Ricky Martin scores with the ladies. Half of the games end in scoreless ties, and half of the time that is what they want anyway. There is a reason that they celebrate like they cured cancer every time they score: it’s probably harder. Hockey is another low scoring game, but at least the action is fast and there is lots of hitting. Whereas in soccer they just kick the ball back and forth across the middle of the field, and if a player gets within even shouting distance of another player, that player will collapse in pain apparently so excruciating that they stay down on the ground long enough that the grass under them dies.

I mean, I don’t know what goes on in European schools, but if you have ever watched basketball or soccer involving Europeans, you can only assume they spent their elementary school days wrapped in bubble wrap. They are very sensitive to touch. If they are touched, they will fly backward as if possessed by some unseen malevolent force and lie screaming in excruciating pain on the ground. Unless the ref doesn’t call it, in which case they bound up to their feet and begin to argue while limping on the wrong leg. Now, that’s why I actually liked watching high school soccer. Our high school girl’s soccer team ran train on everybody. And I mean that literally, some of those girls ran over people; I was genuinely afraid of at least half of them. They were all nice people, but when they stepped onto the field (or “pitch” if you want to be an anal little dweeb) the part of their brain that has kindness and emotion and sympathy just sort of shut off (I find women in malls have a similar reaction).

Speaking of wussy Europeans, that is the other reason I don’t like soccer. We aren’t very good at it. As a flag-waving, French-hating American patriot, I denounce everything that the Europeans are better at than us, like using bidets. And it’s not just the Europeans; even all those little poor countries dealing cocaine down in South America are better than us. Even the announcers are all foreign .I’m pretty sure that just before the start of the Cup, ESPN just goes around hiring the people with the most ridiculous accents, regardless of whether or not they know anything about soccer.

I mean, in most sports the U.S just dominates. Sure, there are a few Canadian teams here and there, but it’s not like I wake up every morning worrying about what the Toronto Raptors are going to do. But America plays soccer about as well as Hellen Keller plays Pictionary. Of course, that could be because we don’t take soccer as seriously as these other countries; although that is probably a good thing. These places take their soccer a little too seriously, and frankly it scares me. I mean, fans have killed players and refs that have cost them games. They have demolished entire cities over losses (and wins for that matter) and riot like the world is going to end tomorrow. I say we tell these soccer fans that Osama bin Laden in some way will cancel 2014’s World Cup and the next thing you know Osama will have fifty drunken hooligans trying to burn down his cave. This is why the only reason I might care about the World Cup is if America can win a few games. Nothing would make me happier than hooligans rioting their countries back into the Stone Age because we beat them at a silly little game where you can’t even use your hands.

Now, believe it or not, I used to be a soccer player myself, and I did my country proud by being horrible at it. Like every other kid, I was in AYSO growing up. Of course, since I was not the graceful epitome of athleticism I am today, I mainly played defense. And that is only because AYSO has a policy where you have to let every kid play. Although frankly, I would have been fine with sitting out the entire game. All I remember is that it was always ridiculously hot, and the chairs under the tent were way more appealing to me. I played from kindergarten until sixth grade – that’s seven years – and I never scored one goal. Ever. The Cubs have nothing on me as far as droughts go.

Eventually, the coaches never wanting to put me up front led me to becoming a decent defender and goalie. The highlight of my soccer career was in fifth grade, when I made a diving stop on a breakaway to preserve the win. OR at least I think that’s what happened. I might have just fallen down and let the goal through. It happened a while ago, so I don’t really remember. But what I do know is that when the U.S soccer team takes the field, I will know exactly what they are going through. Especially the losing part.

Oh Ehm Glee!!

I am a manly man. I fart and burp unapologetically, I am never wrong, I watch sports, and I grow a prodigious amount of facial hair. So I am man enough to admit that I do some not so manly things to balance myself out. For instance, I sometimes ask for directions and bake cookies. And yes, I also… watch Glee.

Maybe some of you don’t know what Glee is (and by that I mean you are telling yourself you don’t know, even though you do know). Glee is a show about a high school singing group that sings a lot. And I mean a lot. They sing about pretty much everything and they don’t care where they are when they do break into song. Which brings up a question: do people who can sing well always just randomly sing about things with other people? I mean, I randomly sing all over the place, and when I sing I sound like a deranged sheep with strep throat. So I can only imagine that people who actually sound good probably sing about groceries.

Anyway, this show has developed its own little cult following of rabid fans who call themselves Gleeks. Now, I do not fall into that category. In fact, I’ve only been watching for about the second half of the first season, and I will admit that some of the character and plot lines irritate the hell out of me. For instance, I’m pretty sure that at one point the plot revolved around a guy who has never had sex in his life thinking that he impregnated his girlfriend. I’m going to assume that he was one of those guys who got pulled out of sex-ed in fifth grade by his parents. You remember those guys? There were always a few who had to leave the class and play Connect-Four or something in a different room while the rest of us learned all the many, wonderful ways that we could contract STDs and die a horrible and painful death.

No, I watch Glee because of the singing. Most of the characters are played by Broadway or pop singers, so the singing on the show is actually very good. Sometimes they sing the songs better than the original artists. Since they can all actually sing, they don’t need a whole lot of instruments and they don’t auto-tune it so much that it sounds like they are singing into fans. Plus, Jane Lynch plays a hilarious cheerleading coach who has some of the best insults on television.

I think that I can explain my affinity for this show. I love music, and the one thing that I wish I was good at was music. As I’ve said before, I suck at singing and I don’t really know how to play any instruments. I feel like if I were good at music, I could spend all of my free time doing that, instead of wasting it writing stupid blogs to irritate people. The one thing that I always promised myself is that I would learn to play the guitar before I die.

I blame my lack of musical talent on my parents. For one thing, neither of them are very musically talented, so I don’t have much to work with genes-wise. Plus, when I was growing up, they killed my showbiz career by enrolling me in the stupidest things. For instance, they signed me up for piano when I was young, instead of a cool instrument. It’s not that pianos are lame, but you can’t really carry them around. Guitar players can carry them around to impress drunken women at parties. I have to somehow hope that for some reason the party has a piano, and even if they do have one, piano music just puts drunken women to sleep. Plus I had some draconian piano teachers. It didn’t help that I never practiced or that I had fingers so clumsy to this day I can’t work touch screens. So needless to say I quit piano by high school.

My musical acting career took a very similar arc. When I was little, my mother signed me up for the play The Wizard of Oz, and I made it through auditions. Of course, I was one of like fifty munchkins, so by “made it through auditions” I mean “I wrote my name down on the signup sheet.” I had about five minutes of stage time, during which I spun around in a circle with other wannabe Broadway stars while lip-synching that stupid yellow brick road song. God that song was irritating. After rehearsing every week, that song for me was like “It’s A Small World” on steroids. So that experience of course deterred me from ever acting again. By the way, I found out this weekend that apparently my friends Baddie and Midget were also munchkins in The Wizard of Oz. They probably don’t want that sort of information going public, but I always change their names so it’s not like anybody knows who I’m talking about.

Speaking of The Wizard of Oz, here is one of my favorite Glee songs from last night’s season finale, a remake of Israel Kamakawiwo’ole’s “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” which was a remake of Judy Garland’s original in the movie, to which Pink Floyd apparently wrote The Dark Side of the Moon while on copious amounts of illegal substances. I won’t spoil the finale for you though, so you can go watch the reruns this summer. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to make up for this note in manliness by smashing things with a baseball bat.

Meet the Parents

You know I sometimes get asked, “Mitchell, why are you such an idiotic, bumbling, blibberish speaking blob of self-love?” Well, I was reminded of the answer this past week, because my parents were in town.

Now, my parents have not visited me in Boulder since my freshman year almost three years ago. It’s not that they dislike traveling; it’s just that for some reason their plane always seems to get stuck in Las Vegas. In the three years I’ve been up here, they’ve been to Vegas about six times.

Mom: “We really wanted to come and see you, but our connecting flight ran into a flock of geese. Luckily the pilot saved everybody by landing in the Hudson River, but we’re going to be stuck in Vegas.”

Me: “Isn’t that what happened to U.S. Airways flight 1549 in January?”

Mom: “Hold on, I’m trying to win back all the money I’m paying for your darn out of state tuition. Hit me… 23? Dammit!” *click*

But since I didn’t go home this summer, they decided to stop by in Boulder for a few days before going to Vegas. Unfortunately, the Greeley Tribune only makes us work two days a week, so that meant I was going to have to be with them during all of this. It’s not that I don’t like my parents, but when you think about it, there is very little to do in Boulder unless you want to go off and hike and climb and raft, which of course nobody in my family ever wants to do because all of those activities result in death. So my parents were planning on coming up here mainly to drink at bars, but with me along this now put a wrench in their plans.

For instance, when I picked them up from the airport, I asked them what they wanted to do. My mother immediately replied that she wanted to get a massage. I politely asked her if she had really flown 3,000 miles to get a massage, which was not exclusive to Colorado the last time I checked. But she replied that this was a special massage that was not available on the Big Island. It was called cranial sacrum therapy, or cro-magnum sacrial or cromial sagro or something like that. When it comes to the newest health scams, my mother is as gullible as a two-year old on laughing gas. Every time I go home, she is trying some new form of physical therapy or taking some sort of berry powder.

After several days of searching, we found a place that offered this massage, so she made my dad and I also go in. Now, it lasted an hour and cost more than a dollar a minute, so I expected five Swedish models to come out and give me an oil bath. Instead, this lady came in and simply sat there with her hands resting on various parts of my body. Not even pressing hard, just laying them there. I’m assuming that the back relief was supposed to come from taking money out of your wallet and thus improving your posture when you sit down. I couldn’t help but feel like I paid to take a one hour nap. Eliot Spitzer has paid hookers less to do more.

Anyway, we also decided to go into Denver, seeing as all of the things to do in Boulder require avoiding mountain lions or being very high. When we arrived in Denver to visit 16^th Street, I ran into a bit of a problem. Namely, all of the roads were closed. We finally figured out that they were having something called the People’s Fair, which was basically a swap meet on steroids. Now, I’m not the biggest fan of swap meets, mainly because they involve walking around in the hot sun looking at things that people tried to make in their backyard, presumably under the influence of several hallucinogens. Luckily, there was a live band that was pretty good. Their biggest fan was a mentally-challenged (that is the pc term right?) man up in the front that was bouncing around and air-guitaring to the music. As much as I wanted to laugh, I had a suspicious feeling that my roommate Chris and I didn’t look much different at the Eagles concert we went to a few weeks ago.

After the fair, I decided it would be an awesome idea to try and go to Cherry Creek Mall. I say try because I myself have only been to this mall once in my life, and I was getting directions from the two Coloradoans in the car with me and I still got lost. But somehow, I managed to get to the mall while only disobeying about twelve street signs. Then I realized that I probably would have been better off getting lost.

You see, I’m not a big shopper, and large malls scare me. Plus, Cherry Creek is made up mainly of stores that are catered to people who have way more money than me. But for some reason, when women travel they always want to go into malls. It doesn’t matter that every state has them, or that they have all the same stores in them. I mean, they travel all that way, and they end up in Macy’s. Then you have benches full of men waiting outside Macy’s, whose souls are slowly being drained out of their bodies.

Not that the trip wasn’t fun. They got to meet some of my friends, visited at least four different liquor stores, and watched the University of Hawaii softball team make it to the playoffs by upsetting top-seeded Alabama. But detailing the parts that were strange always makes for funnier stories, and there were some strange parts of this visit. Or as my mother said, “Hurry up and graduate so we never have to come here again.”

I Am A Sellout

Some of you might have noticed something different about the site in the past few days. This probably means you are spending way too much time on the computer looking up useless sites. Anyway, there are now ads on my site. That’s right; I have officially sold out to corporate America and caved in. Of course, it’s not like I had some sort of moral objection to it in the first place. That would require having morals, of which I have very few (none if you don’t consider my hatred of tofu to be a “moral”).

I mean, if I’m going to be writing this stuff and people for some reason keep reading this stuff, I might as well make some money off of it. Sure, it’s not like I’m getting paid a ridiculous amount of money, but seeing as I spend about fifteen minutes on each entry and it requires me to do very little other than sit in front of my computer and spew hateful stereo-types and generalizations, any money I’m making is more than I deserve. I’m pretty sure Bill O’Reilly says this to himself every night before he goes to sleep.

Apparently the way it works is that this program looks at my readers and decides which ads they might be interested in. Now, this worried me, because I’m a little suspicious of the people that read this, and I have a feeling there are going to be some really strange ads popping up on the screen. They also use keywords from my entries to determine which ads they place, which might explain why there have been a lot of ads for cattle prods and Justin Bieber CDs. Then, the more people that see and click on the ads, the more I get paid. But I’m not supposed to tell you to click on the ads. That would be illegal. So definitely don’t click on the ads. (If you could see through my webcam right now you would see my winking very subtly. Then again, you would also see me sitting in an office chair in my underwear, so maybe it’s a good thing you aren’t seeing through my webcam.)

But the good thing is that you don’t have to be worried about me becoming too commercial. You don’t have to worry about me censoring things just because those **ALERT: This portion of the entry has been edited and formatted to fit this site.** And you definitely can count on me to stick to my guns and not over commercialize this site just because all of those **ALERT: It’s time for Music Hour! sponsored by the Disney Channel, with your guest, Joe Jonas!**

But in all seriousness, I’m not one of those guys that think that making lots of money means you’ve sold out. I see this a lot with musical bands. People get all upset with them when they sign a big record contract because they think that all of a sudden they will become too “corporate” and will go away from their roots. If I were these musicians, my response would be something along the lines of “You can kiss my Aston Martin.” Drugs are not free okay? The love of music only goes so far, and integrity doesn’t buy yachts.

Okay, so after that completely random little tangent, let’s get back to ads. As a journalism major, I realize that the media is ruled by the pursuit of advertising revenue. This scares me, because I have met many advertising majors and (while this may be a sort of journalism turf war and I might be biased) ad people have pralines for brains. (By the way, what the hell is a praline? Is it a nut or is like a candy? Somebody should look that up for me.) They rarely come up with good ads, and when they do, they ride them until they are just irritating. Geico is a great example. Sure, maybe the gecko and the caveman and the money with the eyes were funny the first time, but not the next fifty times. The only commercial characters I never get tired of seeing are these guys, this dude, and whatever the hell these are.

But just because I understand my industry is run by ads doesn’t mean I’m happy about it. Do you want proof that ads have a way of ruining even the most pure and sacred things? Read this story. Yeah, so in order to make sure their ratings were good, they let five kids who didn’t even spell a word right into the last round. This is stupid because it takes away from the spirit of the competition; namely watching little kids spell a word wrong and break down into tears as their dreams come crashing down before them and their parents disown them. For all I know one of those kids might not be able to even spell their own name (then again, with so many Indian kids in this competition that is nothing to laugh at).

This all happened because of ads and ratings. ESPN took one of my favorite things in the world (the spelling bee, not Indian kids; not that there is anything wrong with Indian kids) and they’ve twisted it into a money-grubbing death machine. Thankfully, even though I now have ads on my site, I will always serve as the watchdog of justice and corruption. I’m going to give those people at ESPN a piece of my **ALERT: We interrupt this program for a special segment, sponsored by ESPN.**

Crying Over Spilt Oil

So, I’m not sure if you heard, but there is some sort of oil leak going on. Now, I admit I am a bit late on writing about this, but in my defense, I thought by now they would have solved this problem already. I mean, it’s been more than a month since this thing started leaking oil, and they still haven’t been able to stop it.

It’s not because they haven’t tried though. They have tried a whole bunch of strategies that, when you think about it, are a lot more comical than effective. It’s like they put the Wile E. Coyote in charge. Their first attempt was to just put a big dome over it, but that didn’t work. I have no idea why; I tried to find out but then I saw the words “methane hydrate crystals” and I decided for my safety that I should just stop reading.

Then they tried something called “top kill” which is even more hilarious: they basically just dump a whole bunch of mud into the hole and hope it stops. Now, NASA scientists helped to come up with this theory, so of course it failed miserably. But to me the bigger question is where the hell they are getting all of this mud from? So I advise all of you to be on the lookout for government officials standing in your backyard with buckets and shovels.

BP officials are slowly starting to run out of ideas. At one point, they actually convened a committee of experts, which for some reason included director James Cameron. Now, just because Cameron has hot air coming out his a**hole doesn’t mean he is an expert in energy crises. His only idea was to sink a large ship into the leak and hope that Leonardo DiCaprio’s hair would absorb all of the oil. If they want to get a solution from Hollywood, they should get those oil guys from Armageddon to fix it (by the way, how soon do you think that somebody will make a movie about this?)

At this point I don’t care if they have to shove Kirstie Alley into the hole to stop it from leaking; they just need to stop it. I mean it’s so big that they apparently can see it from space, joining the Great Wall of China, Las Vegas, and the giant hole in the middle of Kansas that BP dug up to make mud for their “top kill” plan. The oil is starting to reach the shores of Louisiana, which can already be heard shouting “No! No, we don’t need FEMA! No, just STAY AWAY! You’ll just screw things up worse!”

Of course, now that the shores are coated with enough grease to slick the Jonas Brother’s hair for the next ten years, the animals are beginning to suffer. As with all oil spills, bleeding heart vegans are rushing out the door with what’s left of your dish soap to go and wash the precious birds that were too stupid to fly away from the oil and instead dove right into it. Also, there is a fishing ban off the Louisiana coast, but I’ve had a personal policy on eating fish from the Gulf Coast for a long time anyway.

Of course, if you thought the animals were suffering, you should try being a BP executive right now. They might as well gather all of their money, put it in a pile, and light it on fire and dance around it. They basically are pumping money into the ocean, and their stock and reputation are taking an even bigger dive. There was even a Facebook group that urged people to piss on BP gas stations, which I would have participated in if I knew where my local BP gas station was. That, and the cops warned me about being naked in public again.

This is all just proof that we should never do things in the deep ocean. I’ve seen all of those Animal Planet shows, not to mention 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. The deep ocean is full of giant killer squids and fish with bigger teeth than Gary Busey with weird little flashlights attached to their foreheads (although that would be convenient for all those times I get lost at night stumbling around in the dark). If we need to drill for oil, let’s do it somewhere where nothing that we care about gets hurt, like the Alaskan wilderness. Ducks are a lot cuter than moose, and unlike moose, ducks don’t eat people.

Anyway, I think that we need to learn some sort of lesson from this whole fiasco, besides figuring out that dumping mud on things stops being a viable solution after preschool. So the next time you drive somewhere to do something stupid and frivolous, like shopping or school, think of all those poor birds covered in oil. But if you do find yourself at the gas station and see me peeing, please don’t call the cops.