blogfaced.com

i just read an article about how oregon’s correctional system has introduced video games to inmates, in hopes of teaching them to chill the f out while they “prepare for life outside jail.”

am i the only one that sees the irony with this? can you imagine some kid going on a crazy shooting spree at his school, blaming it on playing too much grand theft auto 3, going to jail, only to be exposed to more grand theft auto 3 in preparation for his release? AWESOME.

ok, that may be a bit of an extreme case. supposedly the games offered are from the 1980’s - ie. the really really good games that are few and far between these days - unless you’re in jail. no wonder crime is so high. oregon claims they have the least violent jails - well yeah, that’s because nobody there is a true criminal. they probably only robbed a taco bell or something just for the video games and the comraderie. now they’re living it up, having tecmo bowl tournaments with cell block E. something is not right here.

and of course they best part is how parents blame video games for the deterioration of society, and now oregon is throwing this conventional wisdom back in their faces. below, based on my experiences growing up with video games, i’ve illustrated an interesting, and disturbing trend:

i guess it makes somewhat sense - if you’re in jail, and you’re about to leave the big house and enter the real world, you really need to know how to take down some 8yr olds at street fighter 2 in the local arcade - i mean, if you want to fit in socially, and not look like you’d been in jail for a decade.

next thing you know, they’ll get internet - and i’d hate to play against a jailed serial killer over the internet in a first person shooter game. that would just SUCK.

so i guess i’m talking about two “underappreciated” items in a row, here - but i need the following to set up an award that i forgot to give out from the weekend.

let’s get one thing straight about the BIG GULP - it’s is freaking huge. there is NO reason that someone would require that much soda in a container designed to be consumed at one sitting. as such, i feel people drink BIG GULPS for the experience, the challenge, and shit, it sure is a good way to kill some time (and your bladder). downing a BIG GULP is like eating a sextuple cheeseburger, smoking a pack of cigarettes at once, pounding a bottle of aspirin, eating a pan of rice krispy treats (check), or watching the movie agent cody banks and its sequel back-to-back, and then shooting yourself.

and the name is awesome: BIG GULP. totally implying that you are indeed required to slam ALL of it by means of a calculated, efficient, and voluminous drinking maneuver - the “gulp.”

as such, i think i find the BIG GULP so fascinating in the same way i find eating contests so entertaining. essentially we are taking a mundane activity required for keeping our bodies functioning from day to day and making it so ridiculous and extreme that we could nearly die…in this case, taking the concept of a casual soft drink to the next level. sure, people carry around water all day to stay hydrated, but not coca-cola. and 7-11 asks “well why the hell not” - and they are so right.

so, everytime i see someone with a big gulp i cheer to myself. clearly, they do not need 64 ounces of root beer, just like that little japanese kid doesn’t need 53.5 hot dogs in 12min. but it’s fun to see them try. and, when you have a BIG GULP in your hands, you’ll have a story to tell, because you’re in for an epic journey.

which now leads me to the award for most-likely-to-share-a-64oz-BIG-
GULP-with-a-notorious-B.I.G.-look-a-like-taxi-driver-while-cabbing-back-
from-san-francisco(.com) - this goes to my boy litch, who did just that.

ok i’ve had just about enough of the ncaa basketball crap. foolish of me to expect a big ten team to score over 50pts in a game. as such, i’m reproducing my actual shitty bracket below (left), and the coin flip one (right) for comparison so i can turn my attention to more important things…

like PIRATES. i read that the us navy has apprehended some “somali pirates” - ironically, off the coast of somalia. this is very fascinating to me, since it seems that the art of being a pirate was lost with the turn of the 19th century or so. apparently these pirates were firing on us navy ships. while there are “conflicting reports” of how the “gunbattle” began, i’m hoping it was over some “booty” or a treasure map. this resurgence of pirate lifestyle leads me to make the following statement: WE NEED MORE PIRATES. we need more pirate movies, we need more pirate stories, we need pirate reality tv shows, pirate cereals. pirate themed parties, bars, everything.

now, there has been a slight pirate revival over the past few decades to ensure their longevity and solidify their enigmatic lifestyle (minus “the swiss family robinson” - those pirates were pansies.) we have the ride at disneyworld (awesome), the pirate themed legos (arguably the best subcategory of legos, or any toy for that matter), more recently johnny depp/in pirates of the carribean. and of course we have captain morgan rum, and i’m pretty sure cap’n crunch was a pirate at some point. this is NOT enough.

i want more. when i saw “pirates of the carribean” i wanted that movie to last like 6 hours, and i really don’t know why, but i am willing to make a few conjectures:

1. pirates drinking and partying
2. really bad tavern lighting
3. deserted islands
4. STEALING SHIPS - this has to be the most hardcore thing about a pirate. stealing something so HUGE and so SLOW, that wherever you go with it, there is NO WAY to cover up the fact that it was STOLEN. but like pirates care.

so, if you do not agree with me, ask yourself this:

when was the last time you rooted against a pirate?
when was the last time you saw a pirate get his ass kicked?
when was the last time you saw a pirate get tricked?
when was the last time you did not cheer when you saw someone dressed up like a pirate?

the pirate embodies all that is immoral - raping, pillaging, plundering - yet we still cheer them on. additionally, the pirate embodies so many random concepts and physical attributes that make absolutely no sense that it comes off as pure concocted fantasy - so we cannot take their bad deeds seriously. peg legs, gold, talking parrots, eyepatches, “arrrr.” why should any of these ridiculous items be associated with someone that sails around in a ship and steals stuff? is a pirate more likely to lose an eyeball than a blacksmith? is there a communicative advantage on the high seas to the phrase “arrrr!!”? i don’t know, but i don’t care.

but what’s too bad is that real life examples of pirates are rare. so when i read a story like this it makes me smile and wonder if there really are small islands full of pirates - lost in time, drinking and enjoying themselves, looking for treasure, watching sportscenter. if so, i’d like to take a year off and hang.

well it appears after some hot dude on dude Rd. 1 NCAA tourney action my coinflip bracket got destroyed worse than the Big Ten in a game of H-O-R-S-E with an autistic kid.

totaling points according to the aforementioned system, this experimental bracket predicted a whopping 20/32 games correctly, coming in at 277pts. this is contrasted to my actual bracket which is sitting at 23/32 correctly picked games, but 339pts (from upsets).

the crappily updated “coin flip bracket” is below (soon, i’ll put up my actual bracket that’s bringing home the bacon, baby) . maybe next time i’ll have a monkey flip the coin; even then if the bracket goes to shit, i could still get a study like that published in a widely read scientific journal.

since this is my blog, and i can talk about whatever i want, i’m going to give out two awards today, which i am calling the DOT COM award. mostly because the names of the awards are long and hyphenated, if that makes any sense (think about it):

1) the zoned-out-rocky-balboa(.com) award

today i was walking up the stairs from the burrito place on campus and i heard some aggressive stair-climbing behavior behind me; whomever this most likely athletic research scientist was ascending the concrete flight of about 25 steps - he was doing the every-other step thing. so right as this guy was going to pass me i decided to take every other step (just to make it awkward) and stay even with him - BUT, he took down the final two steps in one dramatic leap to beat me to the top in a photo finish. DAMN. he carried on as if nothing happened - one more triumph to himself, probably. (which should have been mine.) i’m sure he won’t even think or remember this event from his daily routine, so i thought i’d make all 4 of you aware of it. if you know or are this guy: congratulations, you’re really cool.

2) the hardcore-double-stuffed-oreo-eating(.com) award (awarded daily)

this trophy goes to a guy in my lab whom i saw dunking his OREO cookies in coca-cola this evening. crap, his teeth must be made out of stainless steel. i’m surprised he didn’t proceed to crush the coca-cola-logged OREO into a fine powder and SNORT it. for the illustration below, i’ve chosen to use chuck norris as a representive of hardcoreness. if you wish to contest this matter i refer you to chuck norris.


stay tuned tomorrow for point totals from the “coin flip bracket” (see below, march 15) after round 1.

march madness is here, baby! people all over the country, whether they’ve ever watched a college basketball game or not, are making bold predictions with no basis whatsoever and getting up in each other’s faces about it (it’s really quite great). most people pick the winners of the games based on seeds. some people based on which team they heard a lot about. others, mascot toughness.

but this year, i’ve taken the guessing out of NCAA Tournament predictions. behold, THE COIN FLIP BRACKET. i have filled out an entire bracket based on the concept of HEADS (higher seed wins) and TAILS (lower seed wins).

to make this simulation SLIGHTLY more realistic, i decided to adjust for SEED DIFFERENCES as follows:
1) a seed difference of one or zero = one flip, 50/50 odds
2) other seed differences follow the simple rule:

(seed difference)/2 = amount of flips that MUST COME UP TAILS in order for the lower seed to move to the next round. if HEADS comes up at all during any of the coin flips, the higher seed wins.

EXAMPLE: (4) LSU vs. (13) Iona

(13-4)/2 = 4.5 ~ 5. TAILS must come up 5 times in a row for Iona to move on.

scoring is standard per all other bracket pools. rd.1=10pt, then 20, 40, 80, 100, 100. plus seed bonus (add seed number equivalent of points for each correct pick).

the completely filled out COIN FLIP BRACKET is below. it’s actually pretty messed up, as i’d never have UCLA or LSU in the final four, but whatever. check it out, compare it to yours. i’ll update accrued points as the games are played…

yesterday i saw a commercial advertising jokes that you can get sent to your cell phone in text format. “to get the best jokes” and “make your friends laugh” all you need to do is text the word “JOKE” to 85050, and they will send you “the most wanted jokes” for $0.99 per joke/day.

now, $0.99 is a lot of cash to shell out for a freakin’ joke, especially considering the age of GOOGLE and 7yr old cousins. that being said, the monthly rate of $29.70 is a steep price to pay for being funny in an unoriginal kind of way…or will you be?

i decided for the sake of pure entertainment, to shell out a few bucks and see just HOW AWESOME these jokes could possibly be. within seconds i received MY FIRST JOKE which i will reproduce below:

“if i have a fight with my wife, she gets historical! - don’t you mean hysterical? - no, historical. she remembers everything i ever said or did. ‘:-)”

well fucking ROFL LOL. that’s not even a JOKE. it required a character within the “joke” to actually set up the joke. that’s like telling someone a knock-knock joke but doing both parts yourself. LAME.

AND, they put that little ASCII smiley face in there at the end as to say “haha you LOSER we just made $1″

so i HAD to unsubscribe ASAP from this garbage…but i forgot and my phone wakes me up this morning to let me know - it’s JOKETIME! seeing as i already paid for this one too, i decided to have a read. maybe they will redeem themselves. here we go:

“why does a Lada have heating in the boot? - so you won’t get cold hands when you’re pushing it. ‘:-)”

WTF?! who is writing this comedic gold? dennis miller?
question #1: what the crap is a “Lada.”
question #2: what the crap does “heating in the boot” mean?

not to be outdone by some 13yr old kid who probably set up this whole joke scam, i did some googling. it has now been confirmed that a “LADA” is actually a russian car of some sort. to tackle question #2, i had countless conversations with BRITISH people. as such, it has also been confirmed that BOOT = TRUNK, as in the rear storage area of a car.

why does the joke combine british slang with a russian automobile?? well i guess the UK began importing Ladas in the 70’s and it became a niche car. DUH.

APPARENTLY, what i gather from this joke is that Ladas are really crappy cars, and EVERYONE knows this, so that’s why the joke is SO funny.

so maybe the service should change their marketing strategy to “ESOTERIC SHIT TEXTED TO YOUR PHONE FOR $.99″

but hey, at least i learned something and now i can tell the joke and make people feel inadequate for not getting it.

CONCLUSION: after flushing $1.98 down the toilet, i have officially opted out. to me, it would have been totally worth it if i was rich, just to have all this crappy material to blog about. i think tomorrow i will give $0.99 to some drunk-ass bum face down in his 13th shot of bourbon.

FACT: jack daniels dijon mustard contains a small amount of jack daniels whiskey.

which would occur first? vomiting from getting drunk off jack daniels dijon mustard, or vomiting from eating too much mustard?

according to my calculations, assuming the liver can process one 9oz bottle of jack daniels dijon mustard per hour, i think one would have to eat about 67 of your standard JD dijon mustards in an hour or so in order to get wasted. i say it’s worth it, especially if you’re underage.

in lieu of the recent controversy surrounding baseball player Barry Bonds, i thought it appropriate to post a special “awareness article” about steroid use in elementary schools…

*******
River Hills, WI - It seems as though the effects of doping in Major League Baseball, highlighted by such sluggers as Sammy Sosa, Mark McGuire, and Barry Bonds, have trickled down into foundations of learning: elementary schools.

Just yesterday, a report of recess violence at Woodview Elementary near the jungle gym (adjacent to the north entrance) which left five 2nd graders aching in pain from what was described as “the worst mass charlie horsing ever,” initiated an investigation into this unexpected outburst of anger. Read the rest of this entry »

the day: yesterday - for the first time ever in the history of me, i actually watched the academy awards in its entirety; and of course i realized why last night was the first time.

amidst jon stewart’s awkward attempted dialogue with a stiff celeb crowd and selma hyek’s breasts, i saw a most appropriate commercial for a prescription sleeping aid, “lunesta.” wooed by their catchphrase, “this great night’s sleep is brought to you by lunesta” i checked out their website like a loser. anyway, per the commercial/website, “side effects may include unpleasant taste, headache, DROWSINESS, dizziness.” not only does it sound like someone prescribed 500mg of my mom’s meatloaf, but DROWSINESS? - well no shit.

in other news, i slept just fine last night, and THAT great night’s sleep was brought to you by five taquitos and several glasses of wine. side effects may include spouting off sarcastic comments at the television, and eating more taquitos.