Cheers Champ

Liking Barack Obama is getting more difficult is getting more difficult every day. The constant bantering for materialism, pitching to investors and the insufferable quote of the day feature. Liking Barack Obama on Facebook is just getting more and more difficult.

When did you stop leading the free world and get so, needy?
And no I haven't started my poster yet.

Not to say I don't like him as the president, my Jeep bumper is currently adorned with the free bumper sticker he sent me. Liking him on Facebook is getting harder and harder because it is the same 4 posts everyday. First is his Quote of the Day, just some shit he said in a speech. This about the only thing he posts that I appreciate as it gives me a better understanding on his take on issues.

Then we start the campaigning.

The second type Barack Obama post is the number of donors post. Hey, we almost have a million donors, don't you want to be donor #1,000,000?! 

The third type is the one where he reaches out to voters by physically grabbing one off the street making them talk about how awesome Barack Obama really is.

Beautiful thing here is the only comment I didn't shop, Dick Cheney.

Finally, merchandising!!!!

At first it was the things you'd expect, t-shirts, women's shirts, mugs, messenger bags, you name it. The usual "I got a CafePress account, so lets run for president!" mentality that I know, love and roomed with at one point in time. Of course even from that experience, eventually the campaigns merch department starts filling those niche campaign items.

This image is not endorsed by Americans for TonTon SuperPAC

With Barack Obama, it started with the grill apron and then the Cats for Obama collar. Every day a new fascinating object. I almost unliked him on Facebook to reduce clutter until this morning. Then all my thoughts against materialism and advertising and money in politics faded. It all faded, every worry I had into oblivion as I gazed upon that glorious, nay, divine object with which my life will never be complete without. 

That is when I said it, out loud for the world to hear. I said, "I need that Joe Biden Can Holder."

Oh my.... It's just so (tears up)... beautiful. (full crying)(joy)

5 Stages of Grief: Local Bookstore Edition

My paperboy job has many ups and downs. The negatives are obviously the early hours and the subsequent antisocial sleep schedule. But the positives, well. Let's just look at my history, my personality. You take all the data points and plot them and any statistician will come to the same conclusion. Some day, I am going to have to build something big, something really big, for no good positive reason other than I find it amusing, and I'm going to have to build it out of a metric assload of Papier-mâché. When that day comes, and by his noodley appendage it will, I am going to need a lot of newspapers. Ladies and Gentlemen I am here to tell you that when that day comes, or more likely very late night. I. Am. Fucking. Ready.

Very seriously, my heroes.

Another positive that came with it recently, a bitter sweet positive point I might add, was that it allowed me to discover that my local used book store was closing this Saturday. I might not have even noticed had not my route made me drive past it. While I was in there I heard the phrase "it's a sign of the times" at least three or four times. This is sadly true as Borders is also now joining the now almost endless list of defunct book retailers, though Borders has a different problem. Having dealt with this particularly devastating kind of grief, I feel like I have enough data point to satisfy psychologists. So here is,

The Five Stage of Grief

(So your bookstore is closing)

Denial

Oh, its like every furniture store ever opened since the Big Bang, their just saying that. Their not really going out of business, just an excuse to throw a sale, broaden the customer base. Maybe they're just moving locations, yes! That's it. They're just moving. This building closes and another opens. Well maybe another bookstore will move in and take over, this is temporary. This is temporary. All will be well...

Anger

I shop here 3 times a month and this is how I'm repayed?!? Sure! So I don't buy anything and perhaps I'm just browsing before buying at a more reasonable price on Amazon. You know what? It's not my fault, it's society. Yeah! Most people in this country have no interest in books. If our culture encouraged it more. I didn't do this, FUCKING FOOTBALL PLAYERS DID THIS!

Bargaining

Look, I will go home right now and cancel my Amazon account. Oh for fucks sake, so Amazon makes it difficult as fuck to do that, not my fucking fault. 

Depression

Please... don't go. If this place goes I'll have no place to kill half an hour while I'm waiting for the pizza I ordered to cook. I'll have no where to browse before buying online. The first time I see a book will be after I bought. I just, please... I'll miss you...

Acceptance

Holy. Living. Fuck.

25 cents a book. All the books here are 25 cents. Every single book. All of them. I can buy them, for a god damned quarter. I've got quarters, my carpets in the car are made from quarters. I can buy books with them. Whole books. For 25 cents. Any book, any book they have. This is... It's just... This is,

THE GREATEST FUCKING DAY EVER!!!!!!!!!!11111111111

My Review of "The Rise of the Planet of the Apes"-related Dream I Had Last Night

So I had no plan to go view "The Rise of the Planet of the Apes" anytime soon, but apparently my brain had other ideas. It decided to make me watch it's own version of it based on the small amounts of information I've picked up from the very small number of television advertisements I've seen for this film. Since the movie-dream was so, we'll go with intriguing, I've decided to review my dream remix of "The Rise of the Planet of the Apes".

Amazingly, no Inception references. 

Note: From here on out, my brain will be referred to as The Director. 

So the film opened with Dr. James Franco demonstrating his new box of Alzheimer's fixing black lights. He had a monkey named George, a curious little fellow, open up his Pandora's Box shaped suspiciously like the IT Crowd "Internet". George was suddenly able to talk after being bathed in it's ultraviolet creaminess. The room applauded and the next scene opened with George helping Dr. James Franco make some improvements on the black light box of wonder. This of course was trickery as George made the box turn him into an asian human with a fashion aesthetic that screams, "I'm on my way to a rave, a monkey rave" with the only monkey bit left being the face. George then proceeded to kill Dr. James Franco using what looked like a neck bone snapping variant of the Vulcan Death Grip. I thought this was an interesting choice on the part of the director, as many of the previews I saw for this film indicated the James Franco would be the main character. It would appear that I had been deceived, but in a pleasant way, at that moment only ten minutes in I knew I could leave all my expectation at the dreamdoor.

The following scene just showed a nice downtown market in an nondescript US city. Suddenly raving neanderthal anime characters with sunglasses came down from above with jet packs and proceeded to one by one NeckSnapVulcanDeathGrip every person there to death. The interesting and almost confusing thing about this sequence was that no one in the crowd fought back. No police armed themselves and nobody fought against their own deaths. This apathy made the scene incredibly eerie and disturbing. It was as if all of humanity faced with extinction just accepted their fate. The director seemed to be using these BrightlyDressedNeanderthalSquareEnixNeckSnappingVulcanDeathGripMonkeysWithJetPacks as a metaphor for our own acceptance of the destruction we are bringing to our planet.

Then, once again, the film took a 360 degree turn from a serious and deep metaphorical analysis of human society and introduced our true main characters, Sheldon Cooper and Leonard Hofstadter. 

Wait the what the fuck a what a why a woahhhhhh...

Leonard spent the rest of the movie basically protecting Sheldon who personally accepted his ape overlords. Eventually they were killed like everyone else on Earth, apathetically accepting the SuperVulcanDeathGrip. To be honest I was expecting this part of the film to be much better than it was. Up until this point the film had been shocking and caught me off guard but by the end it was just a really bad Big Bang Theory season finale and as much as I love The Big Bang Theory, it's not really cinema quality stuff. Also I'm not sure how this prequel fits in with the overall Planet of the Apes canon as the apes apparently abandoned their rave based society. I guess it was just a phase, maybe a side effect of black light radiation. Overall not what I expected when I realized that this was how I was going to spend my entire night of REM sleep.

I give The Rise of the Planet of the Apes a 6 out of 10

Rays of Life

A common theme on this blog has gone back to Mr. Obama's call for the United States to out compete the world. We need to produce more, know more and innovate more than any country on Earth and that ladies and gentleman is a tall order/ambitious new years resolution.

Obama: This year I want to beat everyone at everything.
Santa: Ho ho ho, good luck with that.

Well we're halfway done the year and it seems that we're not doing to hot. Our main exports remain bullets and Justin Bieber concerts while congress is too busy trying to either assassinate the Tappet brothers or raise their taxes to come up with solutions.

Note: spell check is telling me that the correct way to spell Bieber is Lieberman
Notier Note: So Bieber is Canadian, we are more fucked than I thought.

Today I found out that we are failing, once again, to out innovate in yet another sector of the economy. As one would imagine it's the Europeans who are out-innovating us, they have their problems but bitches know how to innovate.

More specifically the economic powerhouse that is the Republic of Cyprus is totally whooping us. They are absolutely dominating this country in one of the most important sectors of the 21st century economy. I am of course talking about the very very crucial energy apparel market. Them crafty Cypricians or Cypricans or whatever the hells have finally cracked the secret to the Far Infrared Radiation, quoting from their website: "known to be the most healthy radiations". Their company FIRTEX produced clothing that reflects back this miracle radiation to energize you. For only 200 euros this miracle of modern science can have you doing spontaneous back flips and winning the X-Games. They claim you'll jump 10% higher and feel 10% more energetic and even reduces pain.

I recommend giving their site a look over, the science seems solid. I highly doubt they picked low-ball percentages which can be wholly explained by the placebo effect. That would just be stupid.

Asian Night

Note: I just found this in my drafts and was quite dismayed to notice I never published it. Enjoy my several month old post!

For those of you who don't go to Alfred University, we have the great pride and privilege to have AVI Foodsystems, inc. cater our dining halls. Recently they've been undergoing their usual face lift procedure they attempt after every break to make us not hate them with every god damned fiber in our horribly malnourished bodies. They have taken the painstaking effort to raise the pans of food to a slight 20 degree angle, because everyone knows angled food is more appealing. Now they have a powerpoint presentation that greets our entrance to their illustrious dining halls. Though they're not dining halls anymore. They are now known as CULINARY CENTERS!

Pictured: Ade Culinary Center
Also Pictured: Used Hypodermic Needle

So for the past several weeks we have been bombarded by a world class advertising campaign to inform us that on the 22nd day of March in the year of our Lord Two Thousand and Eleven, the Powell Culinary Center would be playing host to, ASIAN NIGHT!!!!111 Not Chinese Night, or Japanese Night or Thai Night, motherfuckin' ASIAN NIGHT.

Pictured: Food from the continent of Asia.

I actually had the unique opportunity to sit in on the planning session for this. I am publishing the full transcript here so that one may fully appreciate the work done by our illustrious culinary center staff. Names have been changed to protect the identities of those depicted (also because I honestly don't know people)

MERYL: Oi, Vernita?! When it is this Asian night thingy happening.

NOREENE: I think its tonight.

MERYL: NO ONE ASKED YOU NOREENE!

VERNITA: I think it's tonight.

MERYL: Well cock biscuits. Round up everybody! We need to plan this thing and stat!

Noreene and Vernita gather the troops.

MERYL: Okay people, brain storm.
NOREENE: BRAINNNNNNNNNN STORMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM
VERNITA: Just, just wow Noreene.
EMPLOYEE 1: We should definitely not make nearly enough food.
MERYL: Good point Drone, small portions are classy. 
EMPLOYEE 1: I was going to say because I don't want to cook but yeah, what you said.
NOREENE: I'M AT WORK!
VERNITA: Okay, next idea.
EMPLOYEE 2: We should up advertising Sushi, and stop serving it at 5.
EMPLOYEE 1: Doesn't this damn thing start at 5?
MERYL: Fucked if I know.
EMPLOYEE 2: This is the genius of my plan.

Pictured: Sushi selection.

EMPLOYEE 3: Are we going to serve any tasty beverages?
MERYL: Yes, in excessively small disposable cups.
VERNITA: The plates are also very small.
EMPLOYEE 4: Why is everything so small?
MERYL: It's Asian Night!
EMPLOYEE 4: I don't understand the correlation.

Pictured: Asian sized plates.

MERYL: Also in keeping with AVI Foodsystems contractual obligation to humiliate and oppress, all employees will wear stereotypical conical straw hats on your head while looking down at the ground in shame, hoping your hat will hide your now prideless eyes from your peers as they wander in search of food.
EMPLOYEES: AWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW
NOREENE: !!!
VERNITA: Thank you Noreene for teaching me the sound of a series of exclamation points.
MERYL: And in keeping with our dedication to cruel and unusual punishment of the customer, border lining on a constitutional offense, we will start cleaning up all the food only half an hour into this event. We will actually pour perfectly good food into trash cans as people just begin to arrive and watch as we flush squiggly equals fourteen dollars of their own money into a trash can. It's not like we give them  the choice if they want to spend it.
EMPLOYEE 3: We could buy 3 fucking meals at the Chinese restaurant for one of these shitty meals.
EMPLOYEE 2: Or make 4-5 of our own with higher quality ingredients.
MERYL: Exactly, good to hear you've been reading the employee handbook.
EMPLOYEE 4: What if people don't like the fancy drinks we got them.
MERYL: Fuck 'em, that's what. If they so much as try to cross my Great Wall of Chairs to obtain any other beverages I will personally berate and insult them like the Mongols that they are. Everyone understand what you're doing?
NOREENE: Gonna derp this herp til there ain't no derp to be herped.
MERYL: Thats the spirit. When these kids walk out of this culinary center I want them to feel like this.
VERNITA: This?
MERYL: This.

In conclusion a mad lib: AVI can go (verb) themselves in the (noun) with an (adjective)(noun) on a (adjective)(noun) until they turn (color) and (verb)... refrigerator.

Operation Early Bird: Analysis of the Phenomenon of Mornings

I have officially acquired a job as a local paper boy for the Bangor Daily News. This brings me up to two independent contractor positions this summer on top of the ChaCha Expeditor position I hold. There I have assisted over 500 customers, meaning I've made almost ten dollars! (WOWIE!!!!1) When I was informed that I got the position with the BDN, I was told to meet my new manager at around four o'clock in "the morning". This puzzled me at the time, I agreed to his terms not knowing their full meaning. After doing some research I learned of this "morning" he spoke of.

Morning, which comes from the Middle English word morwening, is an early predecessor of the time I know as noon, or wake-up time. I have dealt with it before, but had cast it aside as a hallucination induced by sleep deprivation. Some kind of nirvana filled with bright light, the smell of buttered toast and surprisingly energetic elderly people. I always assumed that this was the light at the end of the tunnel they tell you about in the movie-films. I always promptly went to sleep as to avoid a certain and most painful death. But further research indicates that this is a legitimate time of day and that it is when a large segment of the population wakes up. Wikipedia tells me that,

The ability of a person to wake up effectively in the morning may be influenced by a gene called "Period 3". This gene comes in two forms, a "short" and a "long" variant. It seems to affect the person's preference for mornings or evenings. People who carry the long variant were over-represented as morning people, while the ones carrying the short variant were evening preference people.


So it would appear that I got the short end of the Period 3 stick. Amazing how a single gene in the human genome has gone on to successfully segregate mankind into two different classes that live in separate universes with separate cultures that only interact around dinner time. Neither knowing of the worlds and cultures that exist in each others independent realms. Both holding discriminatory views of the other. How many of you long-genes have been made fun of for your early bed time? How many of my fellow short-genes, for your inability to wake up? The long-genes live in a world where McDonald's doesn't serve McGangbangs or fries, but these strange sandwiches covered in the fried chicken albumen and soaked in the condensed blood of maple trees. There is a strange film on the landscape known as dew. In their world the police are relatively friendly, the coffee is always warm and most businesses are actually open.

This is in sharp contrast to the world I know and was raised in. See my fellow short genes may find the previous paragraph an informative anthropological piece, now my long-gened friends should take a listen. The Mad Max like landscape that is known as the night or darktime is in every way the opposite to the world of the morwening. The ancient Saxons referred to this dark realm as the death mist. At this time the only people over 50 you see out are working at the only two open businesses, and they don't like you. At this time there are only two vehicles on the road, cops who hate the night shift and teenagers about to be pulled over by these cranky cops.

My long-gened readers may find the previous paragraph shocking and disturbing. I'm sure they are quite happy with the genes they have been given. But let it be known that your world disturbs me as much as mine does you. I will continue to be a resident of your realm, for as long as I am paid to, and not a minute longer. I am a foreigner in your lands and I know that, I promise you that I will not overstay my welcome.

Good night.

Yeah

It is my twenty first birthday. Yop... bradd done got me drunk. That is all. If you have a problem with this post refer to the mission statement. Yop...
Ps. I can blog on my phone now. This is going to end badly.
Pps. Gibberish now: jcujdokfjreioheujiojideodjnfhrujeiuyrdsdghhgdzgjkihfdfihfjhfgkhfzgjgddgjhgdfhkjgdfhkihfdfhkljgdgjkhgfhpoutedriutdsdgouretoiyrwqwetuyrewetuteweyrweyrasjgdsdkufdsdgkjgdsdhjhfzkjcxcjhvkjgdsdjzzkhxxkhvckbcxcbmmnvccvkjgfdgjkjhdzjhgfiuteaqetoitsriydsdoitautewrtewyeqwyeqwruteasfkifsasfkjghkkhgdgjkhxzcvxjgdzhczFddguuydasfkihfzljgzXhjhfsdgihfdfdkhffhd

Edit: So I'm not taking this down as it is a testament not only to our almost creepily connected world but to the powerful human drive to attention whore ones self in a public forum. 

A House Divided Cannot Stand

Ladies and Gentlemen, I am tired. I am tired of the bickering and god damn it I am tired of this division. I am tired of hearing of another happy home divided over this very polarizing issue. Having a friendly discussion over a cooler just to have it fall apart when you claim allegiance to one side or another. The competitive and belligerent nature of this debate is ripping our country apart.

Let me share a personal story. I was raised in a blue home. My father and my fathers father had chosen their allegiance a while back. As I got older and became ingratiated by the opinions of those around me I found myself being swayed by the opposition. Then while I was attending school away from home I converted. This was fine while in high school, except when I found myself at home where I found myself in an environment that had become bitterly divided. Then I went to college and found myself once again an outsider. I had to travel off campus to find people who saw the world as I did. From a blue home, then to a blue school it is amazing that I ever became the red blooded American I am today.

But today I decided enough was enough. Today, I took a stand against the bipartisanship that is wreaking havoc on our society. Today, I looked this conflict in it's eyes and saw it for the bitter childish argument that it was. Today I realized that only together can we move forward and divided we will inevitably fall. Today, ladies and gentlemen, I mixed Coca-Cola and Pepsi, and I liked it.

If Only Life Were So Symple

I would like to open by saying that I like Alfred University, the faculty, the staff, the students. I'm very happy here. The village of Alfred reminds me of the County, this small little enclave of academia in the middle of the woods makes me happy.

That being said, if I had a nickel for every night I was kept up thinking very seriously about walking down to Residence Life or Dining Services and taking a dump on their porch, I would be able to buy a yacht so big that there is a god damned yacht in the pool. A yacht so big that it's gravitational pull in conjunction with the water displaced actually fucks up the tides of whatever ocean it is in. A yacht so unimaginably massive that geographers have to sit down and have a serious god damned discussion about the definition of a continent. A yacht so monstrously big, your mom could actually ride on it. Then, with the spare nickels in my Piggy Bank Death Star, hire SpaceX to divert their engineering talent to firing that Yacht to Saturn. There it would remain in orbit for my three year "Yachtin' 'round Saturn Festive Celabratory Extravaganzery Party". Why? Why do I think so often about defecating on their porch? Because, Fuck Those Guys.

Seriously, they are like one Whore of Babylon
away from being smoted to all fuck.

Now I'm not writing about dining services in this post, because I enjoyed my tuna sandwich today at lunch and as of this moment I am still stacked to be on the 77 meal plan next year. They have been spared this day. No, for this week, as it was this time last year, I have been enslaved by Residence Life. What does that mean? They got me jacked into Symplicity. It's like being jacked into the Matrix, if the Matrix replaced the dehumanizing corporate structure that Neo finds himself in during the intro with a 234-tentacled Japanese rape monster.

Mr. Wizard, get me the hell out of here.

Last year, we got our group together of six people a few weeks in advance like the responsible god damned students that we are. We did everything the damned system told us to, exchanged pass codes, had a little room sign up party at our alloted time, had a previously researched room lined up. The day came, we entered in the system and it had the nerve to look us straight in the eye and tell us no. So we literally lived in the Residential Life office for a week, it took a whole god damned week to figure out why the system had a vendetta against us. Meanwhile all the good rooms were filling up. Finally we got our stuff in and let out a sigh of relief that lasted until the summer when we got our confirmation emails that informed us that the system had placed us all in the wrong room, with the wrong roommate in the wrong god damned building, just as it was designed to do. They finally got their shit together and put us all with our right roommates in the wrong room in the wrong building.

So you can imagine how excited I am to be entering this season once again. Once again I have gotten my room together well in advance and yesterday awaited my 7:30 slot, the best of our group.At two hours left I noticed something funny, my countdown clock said one day and an hour left until two hours from now. I pulled out the nearest speedometer and made sure my computer and I were going the same fucking velocity, well relativity could not account for this bullshit. So after panicking, we finally located the aptly named "fuck you guys" loophole in the Resonomicon (location un-fucking-known) and found out that it's not your groups best time, but the average of all your groups credits class standings best time. Did you hear that? It was the drip drop of my brain melting out my ears.

Then the room we picked in advance had filled out. No problem, there are two left, we'll pick one of those. We have four people and they are four person apartments, nothing can go wrong here, 4 = 4, that much I believe a computer can figure out. So we select to change the room that is now occupied. We want to switch from Thor Floor 3 to Thor Floor 1, Thor Floor 1 is empty, we switch to it, the computer informs us that we can't Thor Floor 3 is full. Well we want to go to Floor 1, you can't, Floor 3 is full. Finally that glitch faded when I deleted all knowledge of our previous selection. Then it informed us that our 4 roommates did not meet the occupancy requirements of our 4 person apartment.

Well we've played your game, so we can finally agree with the others now that you are the world's worst web interface. We weren't sure before. Symplicity? Don't you think you should suffer for the harm you've done to the human race? Don't you think the world's worst web interface ought to be punished for the most effective deforming of reality? Death to sYmplicitY!

Obscure Jude Law reference ftw.

Den Haushalt

President Barack Obama, or as I will call him for the remainder of this post, Le Roi de l'Internet, hath decreed his budget proposal, and the people did say that it was meh. 

It's okay, I guess...

Several people think it doesn't go far enough, others think it could go farther, and still others question how these people measure distance of budgets. I don't know if anyones read it and I'm not 100% sure if a person wrote it. How many times in your life have you heard someone tell you that the bible must be true, because how could one person make all that up? This logic has been presented to me by several people on several occasions and if you haven't heard this argument before, God bless you. If that is good enough justification to believe in a supernatural deity than things like the healthcare bill and the federal register (622 pages have been written in the Federal Register in the time it took me to write this blog post) are irrefutable evidence that the Flying Spaghetti Monster is not only real, but types federal documents really fast.

The bureaucracy has been touched by his noodley appendage.

But I digress (majorly, that whole FSM bullshit was not part of the original outline). As I was saying, King Barry, Lord of Internet and Protector of Locomotives did decree-eth some budgets, it was decreed unto the media, and unto the Twitters and unto the Book of Face. It was there on the Book of Face that I saw the great King of the Interblags did hand some of his power unto the people. He wanted the opinion of the humble American citizen in this great fiscal debacle. I wondered what kind of stirring discussions and debates I would find on the other side of that link. The rousing Libertarian cry for the end of government intervention, or the impassioned liberal pleading for a government that will care for all it's citizens. I was excited to partake in this grand forum of true democracy. Then I clicked the link and this is what I found.

I guess at the end of the day democracy usually dissolves into multiple choice.

Uhm, okay, not what I had mine. But wait! I clicked the link on Facebook, so theoretically I can join the comments thread there! Lets see,

A fair point Ann. Let us hear the voice of the people, not in multiple choice, but short answer form! Now the Once and Future King of All That is Cyberspace is a very busy man, so I will offer myself and my sense of civic duty to sorting through and reading the opinions of everyday Americans! Lets see,

Uhm, I think most everyday Americans speak English, I'm gonna try again.

I don't think that those are words.

I'll hand it to you Shirley, at least you make a bold attempt at the English language. 

 You know Obama, I see why you didn't leave room for an "Other" option on your survey.

Someday. Someday...

I DON'T LIKE SPAM! Have you got anything without spam?

Truth. He speaks it.

God I hope he clicked the Education button.

Wait, what in the name of all that is fuck?! The Arch Angel Michael has a Facebook account! God damn Obama, when they say you got friends in high places, damn.

You know Noah? I'm just not sure if that's true anymore. 

So what has been the point of all this. First, Facebook needs a highest rated comment system like Youtube on fan pages. I think I have presented enough evidence of this. Second, you can totally give the president's budget a product review on Amazon. I demand all my readers to do so. So get to work, both of you!

Never can there come fog too thick

So one of my good friends recently bought a box full of Earl Grey tea for us to drink when everyones over. I ended up looking up the Wikipedia article on it while drinking some when a debate about what it's made of started up. There I found out about a brilliant invention known as London Fog. It's a combination of Earl Grey, steamed milk and vanilla that is just made out of awesome. Apparently after some Googling it's been a popular item at Starbucks, of course I wouldn't know that because fuck Starbucks.

But steaming milk was out of the question, for I did not have the expensive tools to do it. I wasn't going to go blow 500 bajillion pesos on a stupid thing to steam milk for me. Then I remembered that I have the greatest culinary tool since Tater Mitts, the Internet! So I Googled it and the very first thing that came up was an eHow on how to steam milk without an espresso machine! So we quickly stole vanilla from the school and got to work. The results were astounding. I then went on to make some Bustelocino. Overall, another glorious victory for the internet.

Rock Like An Egyptian

First Tunisia, now Egypt. The whole Middle East is up in arms. There isn't much I can add to this that isn't already said, so here is my response to both situations, to the tune of "London Bridge is Burning Down".

Tunisia is burning down, burning down, burning down.
Tunisia is burning down, run Ben Ali!


Mubarak is going down, going down, going down.
Mubarak is going down, so much for the army!

We Can Defeat the World and Win "The Future"

Last night was the State of the Union address and Barack Obama has laid the foundation for the next year in Washington. He called for a lot of fun things like fast trains to keep Joe happy and a nifty high score system so teachers can see how good they're doing. Competition always makes things more fun! (grumble grumble) So after listening to the speech, I picked up two major points.

1. There is a game, it is called "The Future", and apparently we need to win the hell out of it.

2. We are apparently playing this game against the ENTIRE GOD DAMNED PLANET EARTH.

"We need to out-innovate, out-educate, and out-build the rest of the world [...]  we need to win The Future."
-President Barack Obama

For those of you doing the math at home, we're talking 6583779486 players against our 311951347 or approximately 20 to 1. Well I've played my fair share of RTS games and I know that we have our work cut our for us. Luckily we have the resources to even the playing field, if only we could wean ourselves off of the Vespian Gas. I sat there, thinking about the big questions like how to defeat the world and whether to get chicken tenders or a wrap after the speech was done when Obama came to his thrilling conclusion.


We are a nation that says, "I might not have a lot of money, but I have this great idea for a new company. I might not come from a family of college graduates, but I will be the first to get my degree. I might not know those people in trouble, but I think I can help them, and I need to try. I'm not sure how we'll reach that better place beyond the horizon, but I know we'll get there. I know we will." We do big things.

"She told me her name was Billie Jean, as she caused a scene. Then every head turned with eyes that dreamed of being the one." -Michael Jackson

There it is. We do big things. I like it. It's how we roll. It made me think about a blog post I almost put up a few weeks ago about American awesomenessocity that was inspired, not by the leader of the free world, but by Richard Hammond, who while speeding along in a 1970 Pontiac GTO, said this,

The Germans will be remembered for their engineering. The French for their quirky brilliance. The Italians for passion. The British for the nimble roadster. But the Americans, they'll be remembered for giving us a laugh. I don't mean that spitefully. What I mean is they make cars like this that basically just say "Oh calm down, nobody died, it's just a bit of fun. Enjoy it!"

That ladies and gentlemen is the American spirit as outlined by a small British man. At least the former American spirit. We used to be a country that embraced stupidly hilarious ideas. We built cars that were just stupidly powerful. When we heard the Russians had sent a blippy box thingy into space, we decided "Fuck you guys, we'll play golf on the moon." We built a cities economy off of testing nuclear explosions that were stupidly close by. We even wanted to send men to Saturn using a giant nuclear machine gun strapped to a Hilton Hotel. Now we shut down major space programs faster than we eat Baconators, and we know how to eat some motherfuckin' Baconators. 

"No workers are more productive than ours."
-President Barack Obama

So yes, we have unlocked many achievements, we beat the fuck out of "The Past". I think today we take all of that stuff as a given and forget how hard some of them really tricky levels were. Now we have to beat "The Future". I'm sure it'll be a bitch. But we can beat it as long we continue our tradition of playing like a bunch of god damned mad men who create crazy awesome things for the fuck of it. As Steve Carrell once famously said, 


"The Wright Brothers decided to make themselves a flying machine. 'You fools, you idiots! What's your problem?' everyone shouted. 'That will never work because plywood weighs more than air.' To which the Wright Brothers responded, 'No, it doesn’t.'"


So get out there and unlock some achievements, for America.

"If you want to make a difference in the life of our nation [...] become a teacher. Your country needs you."
-President Barack Obama
"Alright, I'll do it. Just get off my back. Jeeeeeeeez."
-Moi

Screw Real Life Applications

Yesterday I moved back to Alfred and set up my computer and inevitably caught up on some web comics. Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal has this excellent comic about science education that made me lqtm.

And then this happened...

Six years might be too short a time to jump on this project if you've been ignoring science your whole life, but it's not too late to learn the ancient art of leather tanning. Someone has to make that saddle, maybe you can get a free ride!