A tidbit to tide you over

It's been a while since I got hit with a stroke of genius, so here is something that is hilarious to tide you over.

Let Madness Ring

In the next few months we will all be entering what I would call the Sports Doldrums. After the Superbowl the College Bowl season it seems like all the air is let out of sports. The NBA finals have lost a lot of credibility over the years with the obvious special treatment of who is deemed a "superstar," and that has made them much less interesting to watch. Throw in the involvement of one Dick Bevetta and you might as well be watching the WWE. Plus the interesting teams like the Suns or the Mavericks will usually lose early in the playoffs for numerous reasons that I can’t even bring myself to start talking about. My fury for the NBA runs deep.

In the summertime we have Baseball. I do like to watch baseball, and I think Playoff baseball may be the most energy charged and interesting sporting event in the world, but the mid summer games just drag. You know I love the Sox (yes there is only one THE Sox), but even I don’t care if they win their 101st or 102nd game (unless it's against the Yankees). By mid summer there are Web Gems and tennis highlights on ESPN and that’s it. I can feel my heart sinking at the thought of fighting my way through another summer holding my breath until College Football kicks into high gear. But between the Super Bowl and the new College Football season there is one thing that keeps me going.

That's right boys and girls. Get out you calculators. Get ready to do your research. Get ready to taunt your friends and neighbors with merciless fervor. Get ready to crush you co-workers on the office pool. Get ready for the inevitable 5-12 upset.

It's time for the big dance.

It's March Madness.

Can you think of a more compelling and engrossing event? Can you think of anyone you know who does not participate in the Madness? My Mom even fills out a bracket every year, and last year she destroyed all of us and we have never heard the end of it since. What sporting event creates this type of interaction and interest? People skip work. They spend money on streaming video packages to watch games at work, which their employers allow because they want to do the same thing. And everyone, everyone, lays down a bet. You may have made your wager already. It may not be monetary. You may have agreed to streak the office bathroom if you are the first out of contention. You may have agreed to shave specific body parts. Everyone has something riding on the Madness.

Which is why it's time to make the whole tournament a national holiday.

Do you think that Washington's Birthday shuts the country down like the tournament does? Do you really think that people are rushing to get out of the office or laying down braiding their back hair as a bet because Labor Day is around the corner? And yet we get time of work for these days so we can go home and spend time with our families reminiscing about how Washington cut down an imaginary cherry tree and then told the old man he did it? Please.

It's time that the Madness got the respect that it deserved. It's time that tournament the respect that it deserves. By respect I mean my ability to sit naked in my basement on the LoveSac eating Cheetos in my own filth watching every game consecutively until the police peel my semi-conscious carcass out to take me to the ICU to help me recover from the artificial cheese/caffeine poisoning.

Yes I might die. Yes prolonged staring at the TV may make me go temporarily blind. Yes my bladder might be forever damaged by holding it all the way through three overtimes. But dammit it will be my right as a human being to waste away in my own drool all in the name of winning the office pool.

That's why they call it March MADNESS people.

Now that's a holiday.

...And knowing is half the battle.

I guess you really can’t go home again. I’m trying not to write about every single thing that starts the wheels turning in my head, but I’m traveling for work and I’m afraid that you’re just going to have to bear with me because I’ve got some time on my hands.

Flipping through the channels I came across a movie that I haven’t seen since I was 9 or 10 years old – The Beastmaster. I’m sure that some of you remember this movie, and if you’re older than me you might remember just how astonishingly (I can’t even come up with an emphatic enough word to express my feeling on this) aweful it is. Human sacrifice, people-melting, bird worshippers, an eyeball ring and I’m pretty sure they painted a tiger black. And this doesn’t even begin to describe how terrible this movie is.

The thing is, until tonight this movie was one of the greatest parts of my childhood. Honestly, I remembered this as the coolest show I had seen. (I don't want to get into why my parents let me watch this show. And I'm not sure why it didn't give me nightmares; separate topics for another time.) Look, I’m not saying that I didn’t expect there to be some let down from the last time I saw this, but I didn’t think that we’d be approaching Anaconda levels of absurdity. Obviously I was wrong. Now I’m left questioning everything that I thought was awesome that hasn’t made an appearance in my life since before I hit middle school. I mean, was He-Man truly the greatest cartoon of all time or not? What about Fraggle Rock? Another Marc Singer classic, V, scared me to death. Now I’m left wondering whether it was truly terrifying, or terrifyingly stupid.

I think that this will be the last time I indulge my inner-child with one of these trips down memory lane. I’m just going to try to put this experience behind me and assume that everything else was just as great as I remember. Seriously, I’m not giving up G.I. Joe.

Get used to it...

Agreed and agreed. The thing is, though, we're a long way from when race, religion, sexual orientation or even gender won't be an issue. These are all topics that grasp the attention of the public. Look at the role that religion is going to play in the presidential race. And I’m not just talking about Mitt. O’bama talks about religion quite a bit and so does Hillary. McCain seems to make it a point not to talk about it as much, but his non-statements are statements, too. Then consider freaking ridiculous shows like VH1’s “White Rapper”. I can’t conceive of a more effective way to highlight race and the perceived differences between races. Race is shoved in our face every day.

Everyone who works in a company with an HR department deals with it everyday. Equal opportunity and affirmative action are everywhere. I can’t even decide whether or not these well-intentioned policies are good for minorities or not. Consider what it’s like to be given a promotion and then have a bunch of people whisper that the only reason you got it was that the HR knucklehead got to check the minority box. I can’t imagine that it’s a terribly empowering feeling. On the other hand, take college football. Approximately 3% of the 117 D1 schools have black head coaches. There is absolutely no way that you can convince me that there is a talent/qualification gap as wide as that between white and non-white head coaches. Honestly, if that’s how college football is I can’t imagine that there are similar problems in the rest of the workforce. Hence, I’m conflicted on this issue. But how can we ever put such things behind us when the U.S. government says that it is an issue?

It’s ingrained in us. I was sitting at a restaurant last night and the manager walked over, who happened to be black, to do the regular check up. And since this subject has been on my mind recently I kind of noticed what my thoughts were. I was conscious of the fact that he was black and I was on my best behavior because I really don’t want to do anything that he would be offended by or could be construed as racist. And it wasn’t that I was worried that my racist makeup was going to come out, because I don’t think that I am racist, but race was still an issue. I suspect that this has something to do with me growing up in an area that is not highly populated with black people, but that’s not the whole story. It also has to do with the fact that I can’t watch TV, listen to the radio or go to work without hearing about race.

What I’m saying here is that while I wish it wasn’t and don’t think that is should be an issue, it is. There is no way to avoid it in today's information society. It won’t be an issue an when the media stops jamming it down my throat. And that’s not going to happen as long as it’s still something that gets a ton of attention from society anytime it comes up.

Did You Hear?

As you are sure to have heard (unless you are deaf, in which case you saw) the world was rocked by a momentous event this week. What, you may ask, was this gargantuan event that rocked the nations, brought news networks to a stand still and sold more magazines and newspapers than anything in recent memory other than the 9/11 attacks? It was an event so shocking, so ground breaking that America could not get enough coverage. The event transcended the news channels and was mentioned on TV and radio channels of every format.

That's right. I knew you would know immediately.


Britney Spears shaved her head.

How pathetic is it that the ramblings of an egomaniacal, child-neglecting addict can capture the consciousness of an entire nation and possibly the world? Seriously, I want you to think back to how many times and from how many sources this news was reported to you. I personally heard it from two brothers, a sister, a cousin, and an in-law, and from every radio and TV morning show, not to mention the jokes on late night TV, and last but not least (Lord help us) the evening news. And it is not like this was a flash in the pan and then it was gone. This even happened almost a full week ago and this morning I heard a sound bite from the hairdresser who witnessed the event first hand. She spoke about it in this whispered tone, with reverence for its horror, like she saw a child shot execution style or something. I have heard the incident analyzed by a clinical psychiatrist on the Today Show, a former FBI Crisis Manager on CNN, and my own mother in our kitchen.

Everyone has a take on this. Turn around and ask your wife, co-worker, or uncle-twice-removed-on-your-mother's-side and I guarantee that they have a formed take on the current state of mind of one Britney Spears.

I can't help but ask myself why we care so much about things like this. We have moved to giving super couples nicknames and speaking about them as some collective.

Now, I know what you are thinking. You can just feel a lengthy diatribe coming on about how there is so much happening the world that is so much more important and that we should spend our time talking about important issues like third world debt, AIDS in Africa, and the war in Iraq.

I say no.

I want to use this event as an example of how useless, irrelevant and unnecessary TV News actually is.

But no, you say. CNN, FOX News, and our local affiliates keep us informed. They report what’s happening in the world and bring important issues to our attention. If we don't watch we will be out of the loop of society, and we will be harmed when some issue that we should have been aware of comes back to hurt us.

I say that concern is exactly what TV News has fed you, and you have bought it hook, line and sinker. I want to elucidate for you a few reasons why you should join me in boycotting TV news of any kind. I want you to do this because it will greatly improve you quality of life.

First, I want you to understand that almost everything you hear on TV News is a lie. Now, it is not a blatant lie. They don't tell you egregious untruths. They just edit. They leave out important pieces on one side or the other. They tie together pieces so they are the most inflammatory, and most sensational, and the most biased.

Everyone in this world has an agenda. Even the good souls giving their lives to deworm orphans in Somalia have an agenda, that agenda being perpetuating the deworming of orphans in Somalia. Granted some agendas are better than others. But the existence of one's agenda skews that person's vision of what truth is. It creates an incentive, in any argument, to only mention the evidence that supports the furthering of their agenda.

Have no illusion, the agenda of TV News is not to spread truth and justice. It is not to solve problems or bring important issues to you attention. Their agenda is to get you to watch them by any means necessary. Therefore they try to present every report as life saving or earth shattering. The truth is that some days are just filler in space time, and rarely is there anything important happening on a given day. So most of the time News Programs are filled with empty reports with useless information. And yet you watch.

Second, In order to accomplish the Agenda, most News shows are filled with sections about the so called dangers of everyday life. They tell you common items can kill you, your wife, your child. Everyday there is a new warning or a new ground breaking study that tells us what we are doing, what we are buying, what we are eating and drinking could kill us. Forget the fact that previous generations have somehow survived the onslaught of invisible dangers that lurk around us. The thought of the unknown being dangerous, even mortally dangerous, is the most effective tool TV news uses to accomplish its agenda.

So watching the news does not give you information to protect you from dangers. Instead it makes you afraid of things that are very unlikely to happen to you. It cripples your ability to stratify risks in your life.

There are many other reasons to avoid the intellectual vomitus that is expelled into the airways every day. I could regale you with stories and instances, but instead I issue this challenge. Next time you spend any time watching this news, take a moment and reflect if you learned anything you would consider significant.

For those that are keeping score at home, Britney's hair, the true father of Anna Nicole's baby, and how your eyeliner could kill you don't count as significant. But I guess it depends on whom you ask. These events together probably took a collective 12 years off of Ryan Seacrest’s life (not really, just a joke. Everyone knows his deal with Satan gives him immortality, not to mention a new Buick every year for his assistant. Ryan fought hard for that one, but I digress. You have to admit that those picture just look right together)

Plus, after all, getting you to skip the news will give you a few minutes every day for you to help accomplish my agenda, to read and further distribute this blog. (Insert evil maniacal laugh here).

However, this is a free thinking blog, so if you prefer you daily serving of illogical fear… no sorry I can’t justify it for you. Just surrender to the despair. The News won’t care. Just as long as you watch. There is plenty of despair to go around.

Tell your cardiologist I at least tried.

Get black to where you once belonged

Yes, that was clever...you like that? Ok so here goes on that whole Barak Obama isn't black enough jazz. The lady that Stephen Colbert had on was a quack. She seemed convinced that Barak Obama wasn't black because he's not a descendant of west African slaves. That must mean that the only people who can claim to be black are the descendants then, not the originals. So we have to deduce that Africans are not what we would call black since they are not descendants of slaves (unless you live in Liberia, you might be). If Africans aren't black, then how can descendants of Africans therefore be black? Or how can they claim to be blacker than Africans or blacker than Barak Obama. Yeah their ancestors were slaves but so were mine, just not as recent. (think Israelites, people. We built those damn pyramids...all the live-long day) So why can't my whiteness and Christianity be a qualifier for checking the "oppressed" box? Why can't I claim to be whiter than Germans, English, Dutch, or Canadians? We all know Canadians are the whitest you can get, but you don't see them going around blabbing about how white they are and how un-white other people are.

I think that, so far, Obama has given nothing to fuel opposition to him. He is, dare I say, lily-white in his past. And where he hasn't been, he has been forthcoming with any and all details about smoking pot, snorting coke, and his current vice, smoking. There is nothing to reveal. So now the Republican machine has come up with "He's not really a black man!" Well, whoop-de-sh$%. He's black enough to look like a black man, and that's all there needs to be. Oh, and he stole Ross Perot's ears and attached them to his own head. Is that a crime? Taking Ross Perot's ears is fine, as long as you had to kill him to get 'em.

Finally...

Y. football tickets to cost more

By Jeff Call
Deseret Morning News
PROVO — Originally built in 1964 and in dire need of improvements to its infrastructure, LaVell Edwards Stadium is undergoing a major, five-year renovation project.
And BYU is asking its football fans to help foot the bill.

http://www.deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,660196068,00.html

Finally my tithing money can be spent on stuff other than your piece of crap football team.