A thorn in my side

Two weeks ago, I was playing some pickup bball. In the course of exhibiting some tenacious d, I came down hard on my left heel. "Ouch," I thought, but brushed it off, much like Michael Jordan when he had the flu. Over the past two weeks, the dull pain in my heel didn't really diminish and I couldn't figure out how I had bruised my heel so badly.

Last night, I finally looked at the sore spot and what did I discover? Not much, except a jagged splinter jabbing deep into my soul. After cutting out the splinter and having some puss ooze forth, my heel feels a lot better today.

The moral of this story is that tar heels ain't just for stopping worms, they keep the splinters out as well. Play safe everybody!

(This post was going to end with a link to the story about how tar heels refered to people in the south who put tar in their heels to stop parasitic worms from infecting them, but apparently that story was apocryphal. Nevertheless, the above advice still rings true)

All Hell Breaks Loose?

So, I saw Doom on opening night this weekend. And I think most people from my generation associate Doom with training to carry out an armed attack on one's high school and shooting a rocket into Satan's brain. Unfortunately, "Doom: The Movie of the Game" had neither of these things.

What it did have was a lame reworking of the storyline into some fluff about extra chromosomes and 'evil' genes. I don't want to throw out any spoilers, but it turns out Doom is just another zombie movie. That said, there were two awesome things about Doom:

1) The BFG, first called the Bi-Force Gun? but then redeemed when The Rock says, "Thats a big fucking gun."
2) The Rock, being awesome, in general...

In the final assessment, I suggest that you don't go see Doom. And I also suggest that you don't shop at Best Buy, because I would be typing this from a new computer if Best Buy wasn't a podunker who won't accept my checks.

This just in!

Perenial man on the street, Jake Livermore, has informed me that he is starting his own religion. The high priest will be holding ceremonies right here. In case you didn't pick that up the first time, I said right here. Ok, sit back, take a deep breath, its gonna be all right.

Speaking of all right, you should listen to Stevie Wonder's Innervisions, the new 'Now Hear This' selection. On the awesome scale, its way up there, even for Stevie. Too High, Living For the City, Higher Ground and Don't You Worry 'Bout a Thing are all solid gold hits. Finally, early reports indicate that Radar may not be invited to the upcoming mash on October 31. Vote early and vote often!

And now in sports...

Now, when I was a wee lad, Sunday nights were a special night in the arena of sports. It wasn't due to NFL games or the wide world of sports or something lame like that. It was due to one thing. Last night resurrected that long lost glory as my basketball team scored our first victory ever. Yeah, thats right, we're the ones not in last place.

Besides being basketball season, its also the season to give out Alfred Nobel Memorial Dynamite Prizes. As you may or may not know, these prizes recognize the people who are incontrovertibly awesome at what they do. So, I thought I should direct my readers to one of the pillars of twentieth century science. I know, I know, many of you were thinking that such a preeminent scientist as Nils Gustaf Dalen, much like Ghandi, had been looked over by the Royal Swedish Academy. Well, you can thank your lucky stars every time you pass a lighthouse that he wasn't!

Finally, in my algebra class at San Quentin we had the students make up their own word problems to solve. I leave you with a query:

Lindsey Lohan was driving down Robertson Blvd. at 60 mph in her black convertible Mercedes E-Class and being trailed by the Paparrazzi in a tinted Chevy SUV at 80 mph. She spots those tree-jumping photographers 90 seconds before they spot her. How long does it take before they catch up and snap shots of her crashed into an illegally U-turning flower delivery truck?

Breaking news!

No, I'm not talking about the breaking news that I had an awesome time hanging out on a farm pressing cider and eating potluck (including my decadent french silk pie). I'm talking about this breaking news. Yeah, I know. Tell me about it.

In other breaking news, the Flaming Lips have finished filming Christmas on Mars. They expect to have the film ready for next summer when they are on tour. So that means the film will be released in approximately 2010. Much better news is that the new album is gonna rock. Which should renew hope to the ears of anyone who heard that Chemical Brothers collaboration and the Albulance Driver single and the Bohemian Rhapsody single...

Finally, to close out this news segment, I randomly stumbled across Energy 92.7 FM on my radio dial. Its a dance radio station, but the important fact is that they were playing a mashup of "We Will Rock You" and "Hey Ya." All I can say to that is Boo-Yah!

And Whitey's on the Moon!

Some of you reading this may have been participating in all of the Christopher Columbus Day festivities earlier this week. Yours truly was most definitely not, though I have nothing personal against Topher Columbo. You see, in Berkeley, California, there is no Colombus Day. Instead, the federal holiday is known as Native People's Day.

Berkeley is all about stopping the White Man's oppression. So what other forms does White Man's oppression take? Well, Whitey always wants to put North as up on his maps. Berkeley freed us from that tyranny by putting East on the up and up.

As long as we're on the subject of dumb things, could somebody tell me why UC Berkeley's engineering building only has two elevators and no stairs on the ground floor. The elevators are always packed and you are lucky to get in the third trip round. You could always walk up around the hill to the backside of the building and enter at the second floor. Gosh, these people are engineers, you'd think they could design things a little better than that.

Today's blog entry is dedicated to the ornery memory of Andy Rooney (1919-2005)

The South Takes What the North Delivers

This past weekend I was visiting the former desert known as Los Angeles for my pals, Paul, Adam and Ellen's housewarming party. It was a delightful time hanging out and eating 3 kinds of chili (missippi mud sludge, pseudo-chicken noodle soup and the goldilocks of the group, Ellen's homestyle). The beverage of choice was the new Mountain Dew: Pitch Black II; the sequel to last year's Pitch Black. Yummy, yummy, food in my tummy!

Speaking of things that were in the dark until recently, we also discovered the wonder of Google Videos featuring all user submitted material. If you need some help getting started, here's a search that will introduce you to the world of Dustin Paulson. Ain't technology grand?

In addition to my buds, I'd like to thank everyone who made this weekend possible. Yes, that means, Nicole Ritchie get up and take a bow. It wouldn't have been LA without me seeing you, thinking "Oh, is that Mary Kate? Nope, it's Nicole Ritchie" and nearly running into the paparazzi trailing behind. Of course, we can't forget middle-aged man, who threatened to shoot us if we hit his black SUV. Finally, lets take our hats off to Mr. CHiPs for knocking my 91 in 65 mph ticket down to 80+, thus making me eligible for traffic school and no ticket on my insurance record. Hoorah for people!

Answer me...

If I told you that I had just played a pickup game on a local basketball court, what two things would you immediately assume were going on in the adjacent courts?

Well, if you answered:

a) people playing full court basketball... on unicycles, then you would be half right


and if you followed that up with:

b) a group of black men shooting dice for money, then you get to take home the grand prize

Just a step to your left...

Back in High School, my German textbook gave me the impression that Germany was in a timewarp that perpetually placed the country in 1985. Last night, I found out that the German time warp is actually the future end of a time warp localized around Sweden. How did I find this out you ask?

Well, if you can answer me what four skinny men with long hair in flowing shirts were doing in San Francisco last night then you'll have your answer? Whats that you hear, some Byrds chirping? Did Jefferson Airplane just fly over? No, no, its just Swedish rock band, Dungen (pronounced Dun-yen as I learned last night).

I've got a soft spot in my heart for psychedelic acid rock and Dungen took a fiery axe and jabbed it right in there. There was reverb, guitars, drums, reverb, keyboards, tambourines, reverb and even a flute (Ian Anderson eat your heart out). I believe that my psychedelic freakout quotient is satisfied for at least the next three monthes.

Don't Believe the Hype

Apparently, some people in this world believe that David Cross is overhyped, but what about his other half, Bob Odenkirk. However hyped he may or may not have been, Mr. Odenkirk has sunk to a new low in my book. That opinion is based on an article where he puts his boner on the modern-day Andy Kaufman's head (NB: putting one's boner on another's head is the supreme sign of respect and derives from the instance when Socrates put his boner on Plato's head). For those of you who didn't read the above article, it talks about Mr. Kaufman's dream to one day be cool and hang out with rock stars.

That got me thinking about another guy who desperately wants to be cool. My freshman roommate in college was a crazy Quentin Tarantino fan. Now, his movies were all right, but I didn't really believe all the hype. I saw Four Rooms for the first time yesterday and while not his greatest film, I realized that I've bought the hype, hook, line and sinker. Watching his movies is like seeing what a fourteen-year-old with encyclopedic knowledge of pop culture would do with a camera. They only contain the things that you would say, "Remember that part where..." or "That was awesome when..." to your friends as you walked out of the theater. Anyways, it made me wish that he had made the Matrix sequels.