Snooze Button Dreams
Snooze Button Dreams
Snooze Button Dreams
February 17, 2009
The Somewhat-Annual American Idol Live Blog
(Category: Current Events/Pop Culture )

8:10pm: Jackie - Christ on a bicycle, what is she wearing? Someone raided Minnie Mouse's wardrobe, and from the sound of the voice, I'm guessing it was someone with a trachiotomy.

8:18pm - Rick Braddy. This dude is prematurely balding, and his pro-mo's not exactly accentuating the positive. He sounds like a bad lounge singer. I'm beginning to regret that I didn't stop by the liquor store on my way home. Maybe we've got some crappy vodka around here...

8:30pm - Alexis Grace. What.The.Fuck. I thought this show was about hot people with minimal talent who could be widely marketed to the drooling pop masses. Did they drop the 'hot' part this year and go for broke? On a lighter note, I did manage to find some Smirnoff in the cabinet. No OJ in the fridge, so I figure I'll just mix it directly with the contents of my stomach. At least the contestants will start looking better...

Paula Abdul's rambling like a homeless drunk, and I swear her eyelids are looking lazy. Maybe she's tripping. Wait, was that Ted Danson and Doogie Houser sitting in the front row? Now I think I'm tripping.

8:45 pm - Brent Keith. Oh God, but he's laying it on thick: a country song about poor crackers with pickup trucks and chicks who use White Rain. Are you kidding me? If this guy was from where I live, we'd mount his carcass on a spear Dracul-style when he got kicked off this show. He says he doesn't think that country fans will forget his music, and this is the kind of music he wants to make. If that's what country fans want, they deserve all the ridicule that's heaped on them.

Cut to commerical. This vodka is going down good, but it's making my burps smell like warm garbage. I guess that's what happens when you chase dijon-glazed pork loin and mashed potatoes with low grade swill from a plastic bottle. I'm going to fridge to find something, anything, to make my burps smell better.

Question: If a mousetrap snapped closed on say, a cats paw or tail, would that cause permanent damage?

8:50 - Stevie Wright. The hotness draught continues. Talk about marketable though, that girl should be selling ad space on that forehead of hers. She certaintly shouldn't be singing; if I had to guess I'd say she hasn't even done karaoke before. Damn. The judges are blasting her for sucking so bad, and the audience is booing. Fox must've packed the stage with a field trip from the school for the deaf. Cowell says her performance was so bad "I wanted to punch my own teeth out, fashion a cutting tool out of them, and saw my own bollocks off with it." That may not be exact, but it's pretty close...

8:56pm - Anoop Desai. As a Carolina fan, I've got high standards for this guy even though he looks like a total d-bag. He can sing, but he sounds like Boys II Men circa 1992. The judges are complaining about technical shortcomings with his singing. Dial 6 to vote for unibrow.

Cut to commercial. Hmm. The vodka bottle's looking a little light; and no one's getting any hotter. That's an uncommonly bad omen.

9:04pm - Casey Carlson. The hot draught may be bottoming, but we've got a long climb ahead of us. Talent is still painfully absent in all forms. This chick dances like Elaine Bennis from Seinfeld; and it seems that the judges are avoiding eye contact in hopes that maybe this will all just go away. The judges are passing this poor girl around like a 5-dollar hooker. Paula says "the guys" always say she's beautiful; I would like to respectfully enter my dissenting opinion. She only looks halfway decent because she's following three trolls, The Forehead, Unibrow, and something that looked like an starved wildebeest with pink highlights.

9:18 pm. Michael Sarver. Dude works on an oil rig, so I ain't saying shit about him. Normal people go to the gym each morning before work, but roughnecks get up and put people they don't like into industrial-size plastic shredders and make smoothies from the leavings. I notice the judges are aware of this as well, and adjust their commentary appropriately. The guy sits down on the couch, and Seacrest's panties moisten noticeably.

9:25pm Ann Marie Boskovich. The Wife and I agree that hotness has made its first appearance of the night. And she can sing too? Hey, there's a refreshing idea! Ted Danson's on his feet. The judges give her shit about choosing a difficult song, and she calls them on it; which is a moment of awesomeness that goes relatively unnoticed. Cowell says something absolutely retarded about how the real world is going to be able to tell she's not a true singing talent. Hey Cowell, the refutations of your hypothesis are legion, and one of them is sitting right next to you. Her name is Paula Abdul.

9:35pm - Stephen Fowler. Michael Jackson's music freaks me out, because even though he's singing about a girl, you know in his mind he's thinking about a preadolescent Macaulay Culkin. The singing is okay, the hotness level has begun heading back down. He tries to say that his performance sucked because he's not 100% ready. Newsflash buddy, it's the first week, neither is anyone else. If you make the cut tonight (ROFL) try not to be such a pussy next time.

The vodka is finally gone. I think we've got a bottle of white table wine in the fridge. Can you mix stuff with wine? I think we've got some Apple Pucker in the cabinet. Apples, grapes, they go together right?

9:48pm Tatiana Del Toro. This chick has annoyed me from day one. She's a drama queen with an annoying laugh. She also rolls her R's, but only when she says things like Peurto Rico or something. When I watch her sing, I feel like I'm watching the talent portion of some cheesey pageant competition. I hope she trips on stage, loses control of her bowels, and is shamed into spending the rest of her life in a cardboard box. Cowell agrees with me.

Tatiana then proceeds to talk over Seacrest and plead with the American people to fulfill her dream of being the American Idol. I think she'd make a better Miss Chiquita Banana 2009. Also, wine and Apple Pucker tastes like Kool Aid and hobo piss; but it's better than sobering up at this point.

9:56pm. Danny Gokey. I think this guy is a good singer, so I'm expecting him to make the rest of tonight's contestants look like pillocks. And wouldn't you know it, he is doing just that. The judges push each other out of the way to impact-mold their tonsils to the base of Danny's penis. Except for Cowell, who likes to play hard to get.

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September 10, 2008
This is Above My Paygrade
(Category: Current Events/Pop Culture )

So there's this club of uber-nerds called CERN. I'm not sure why it's called CERN, because such an acronym cannot be derived from its full name; which is the European Organization for Nuclear Research, or Organisation Européenne pour la Recherche Nucléaire in pig latin. But I digress.

Anyways. This Coalition of European Research Nerds has built this thing called a Large Hadron Collider. If particle acceleration was NASCAR, the LHC would be the Texas Motor Speedway. A pretty good metaphor, since the LHC's main purpose is to act as a track around which nerds can watch subatomic particles smash into each other.

Well, they powered it up last night; and that was supposed to be the beginning of the end. The whole deal with this thing, according to the Chicken Littles, is that the experiments performed at the LHC will create black holes. Think of a black hole as the Michael Moore of gravitational pulls; it consumes matter at such a high rate that the vaccuum it creates as it gets larger and larger becomes inescapable. So you can see how the idea of such a thing being created at CERN would be cause for the Chicken Littles to worry.

However, the good news is two fold:
1) They won't start actually running the LHC until this weekend, so we have plenty of time to run up huge debts on Ferraris and mansions that we'll never have to pay for once the rift between matter and anti-matter is breached. Or something.
2) Since the LHC is located in Europe, we'll enjoy the sight of watching all of them get sucked in first. Hell, it should be televised. Maybe we can get ESPN to drop one of the college games and carry The LHC's Black Hole vs. The Known Universe.

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August 11, 2008
Olympic Blogging
(Category: Current Events/Pop Culture )

I've yet to get confirmation, but I've got to assume that Bob Costas' contract stipulates that he must not be on screen with a taller man, who is not an athlete; because I swear to God they've put a 6-foot dude in a stuffed bra and a brown wig, and named him Mary Carillo. She got a voice like a fucking violone, for Pete's sake.

On the other end of the spectrum, we have Kerri Walsh. As if Women's Beach Volleyball needed the ratings boost. Thank you sweet baby Jesus.

Gymnastics, for all it's prancing, arm-lifting, ribbon-twirling flamboyance; is a staggering display of atheleticism. I tried gymnastics when I was in middle school. It lasted until we got to the rings, and my instructor noted, rather nonchalantly, that if we swung incorrectly we would dislocate one or both shoulders. I was like "Oh hey, um. I was just looking for something to do between soccer seasons, so I'm just going to ah, bow out at this point...given the...that um, the idea of two simultaneously dislocated shoulders made my balls shrivel into my abdominal cavity. So, ya'll have fun." Those people are strong to, like chimpanzees they are.

Just watched Phelps win his 9th career gold medal in the 200m freestyle; breaking the world record just for good measure. The only two Americans to ever win that many golds were two randoms named Carl Lewis and Mark Spitz. Whoever they are. I mean, who watches the Olympics anyways, right?

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July 23, 2008
Pinky and The Brain
(Category: Current Events/Pop Culture )

Are you thinking what I'm thinking?

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, visiting Moscow to pursue weapons and energy deals, on Tuesday called for a strategic alliance with Russia to protect his country from the United States.

Chavez might be one of my favorite dictators. If they were on collectible cards like pro athletes, I'd keep his in a plexiglass case. His card and Ahmadinejad's; right next to each other. Anyways, back to the article:

The newspaper Kommersant, generally regarded as reliable, reported Tuesday that Chavez is looking to order Ilyushin jets, diesel-powered submarines, Tor-M1 air defense systems and possibly tanks. It did not specify its sources."

As anyone who's seen The Hunt for Red October can tell you, a diesel-powered sumbarine couldn't sneak up on a deaf retard dogpaddling in his backyard pool - not to mention ambushing something like the new nuclear Virginia-class subs. Or as I like to call them, billion-dollar cans of whoop-ass (my favorite? This one, because I was there).

Of course, upon reading that diesel submarine thing, I was immediately curious about 'Ilyushin jets'. According to wikipedia, Ilyushin hasn't made a fighter plane since the stone age; and they mostly build transports these days. Unless you count these Il-28's, that apparently make great museum peices.

The way I see it, Putin (who, let's be honest, is the real mastermind behind Medvedev) is laughing his ass off. He's selling off all his old junk to Chavez, who's happy to buy it because he's suffering from some paranoid fantasy that the US has it out for him. If the US has it out for you bro, diesel subs and 70's era jet planes aren't going to help.

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July 10, 2008
I See You Have a Schwartz...
(Category: Current Events/Pop Culture )

Okay, looks like some people are saying that Iran's latest missle launches were recycled and/or photoshopped images.

rockets.bmp

This opens the game theory box. Even without the photographic evidence throwing doubt on the launches, it will be easy to find out if Iran did, in fact, play 4th of July yesterday; and to what extent. That's what satellite images are for. The real question is; if Iran is faking it, do you call them on it or not?

The answer to that question, of course, depends on what you think Iran is going to do if you call them out. Ahmadinejad doesn't exactly strike me as someone who's long for this world, so calling his bluff might just result in real missle launches. Of course, what's the difference to the rest of the world between a launch they don't know is fake and a real launch? Nothing. It would simply be needless escalation.

I'm wondering if the best official course of action is to do nothing, let the blogosphere out them, and then snicker at them from behind closed doors. We're getting a free peek at Iran's hand, and seeing that they've got two pair of jokers that have aces scribbled on them in magic marker.

I mean, a fake missle launch really isn't even saber-rattling; it's like, I don't know, waving around a picture of a saber and yelling "Clang clangitty-clang!"

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July 02, 2008
Food For Thought
(Category: Current Events/Pop Culture )

Surprise surprise; looks like Obama got one of those ubercheap home loans. I can't say that I'm all that surprised though, and I wouldn't be to find out that all Senators probably did. The wealthy will nearly always get breaks on financing because they're seen as a safer investment. My only problem is the conflict of interest it creates when the rich people getting the breaks are the people writing the legislation that governs the lender.

Looks like we met 15 of our 18 goals on Iraq so far. That's pretty good to hear, considering the pissing and moaning that has been coming from the peanut gallery all along. I mean, 83% ain't going to get you on the honor roll or anything either; but it's good to see that we're tracking well.

And here's something all bloggers can get behind - water-boarding MSM 'journalists'.

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July 01, 2008
Come Sail Away!
(Category: Current Events/Pop Culture )

I love the smell of raw sewage in the morning.
sailing.bmp
Water quality has been a concern for the sailing events, given that many coastal Chinese cities dump untreated sewage into the sea. At the same time, rivers and tributaries emptying into coastal waters are often contaminated with high levels of nitrates from agricultural and industrial runoff. These nitrates contribute to the red tides of algae that often bloom along sections of China's coastline.

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May 06, 2008
Hell's Kitchen Walkthrough
(Category: Current Events/Pop Culture )

The Wife had to work tonight, so we set the DVR to record Hell's Kitchen for her. For some reason, the damn thing wouldn't record. It's a cable company-supported peice, and they recently upgraded the software on it and ever since it's been a little wonky. Anyways, I decided to take notes for her, and write up the episode so she wouldn't miss anything.

I present it to you here in the style of a video game walkthrough. If you're not familiar with the genre, you're a geriatric or a Luddite, or both.

Now, what follows may not be funny if you've never seen the show. I'm also willing to take the risk that it may not be funny regardless; but I don't care.

Continue reading "Hell's Kitchen Walkthrough"