Today is remembrance day, the Eleventh of the Eleventh, and the ninetieth anniversary of the end of the First World War. I was asleep at 11am GMT, but I will be observing a minute of silence at 11am EST here in Kentucky.
In England, 3 of the 4 surviving British WWI veterans attended the traditional ceremony at the Cenotaph, and Prince Charles attended a similar ceremony in Verdun, France.
And in Australia, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said "We have all endured a most bloody century. Let us resolve afresh at the dawn of this new century.. that this might be a truly pacific peaceful century."
Showing posts with label 2008. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 2008. Show all posts
11.11.08
9.11.08
And again...
I see that Bill O'Reilly and the Fox news team have started this year's "War On Christmas" blatherings already.
Is it just me or is there something sick about this so-called War On Christmas tomfoolery in a world where people really are suffering persecution for their beliefs?
Is it just me or is there something sick about this so-called War On Christmas tomfoolery in a world where people really are suffering persecution for their beliefs?
7.11.08
Are we nearly there yet?
I got a note from the Blog Police last night and if I don't mention the election I will get my license revoked.
I may have used that joke before.
Ah well.
So, like, Obama won. America's first African American President. Yes, its a historic moment. I was actually watching Indecision 08: America's Choice on Comedy Central when the news broke. Yes, this is a tradition, you may recall that I watched Colbert and Stewart team up for the last election in 2006 and I thought I'd do the same this year.
So, Obama won, and not only won, trounced the holy shite out of his opponent. Obama got 349 electoral votes to McCain's 163, more than double. And there are still two states not reporting--Missouri and North Carolina--but the two are likely to get one each.
Here's an interesting point that I noticed. The election was decided so fast that all of the news outlets were announcing the result while polls in Alaska were still open!
Wow, way to tell an entire state that they're irrelevant.
There was bad news, though, for anyone who values freedom. Having passed a same-sex marriage law two years ago, California residents voted to pass Proposition 8, ammending the state's constitution in the same religious-fueled, hate-based, equality-destroying way that Kentucky and six other states did in 2006. All for that ridiculous reason that wobbles on about "protecting marriage".
Good news, though. The Sensible Marijuana Policy Initiative passed in Massachusetts, decriminilising the possession of small amounts of marijuana, and the Compassionate Care Initiative passed in Michigan, allowing for the use of marijuana for medical purposes.
So, some freedoms were squashed, some sensible laws passed, and history was made. Not bad for an election.
I may have used that joke before.
Ah well.
So, like, Obama won. America's first African American President. Yes, its a historic moment. I was actually watching Indecision 08: America's Choice on Comedy Central when the news broke. Yes, this is a tradition, you may recall that I watched Colbert and Stewart team up for the last election in 2006 and I thought I'd do the same this year.
So, Obama won, and not only won, trounced the holy shite out of his opponent. Obama got 349 electoral votes to McCain's 163, more than double. And there are still two states not reporting--Missouri and North Carolina--but the two are likely to get one each.
Here's an interesting point that I noticed. The election was decided so fast that all of the news outlets were announcing the result while polls in Alaska were still open!
Wow, way to tell an entire state that they're irrelevant.
There was bad news, though, for anyone who values freedom. Having passed a same-sex marriage law two years ago, California residents voted to pass Proposition 8, ammending the state's constitution in the same religious-fueled, hate-based, equality-destroying way that Kentucky and six other states did in 2006. All for that ridiculous reason that wobbles on about "protecting marriage".
Good news, though. The Sensible Marijuana Policy Initiative passed in Massachusetts, decriminilising the possession of small amounts of marijuana, and the Compassionate Care Initiative passed in Michigan, allowing for the use of marijuana for medical purposes.
So, some freedoms were squashed, some sensible laws passed, and history was made. Not bad for an election.
28.9.08
Cincinnati 12-20 Cleveland
That makes the Bengals 0-4.
I called Paul Brown stadium this morning to ask what time the game started.
They said "What time can you get here?"
I called Paul Brown stadium this morning to ask what time the game started.
They said "What time can you get here?"
31.8.08
It's Olympian.. or not.
Is it safe to come out yet? Are they gone? The Olympics, I mean. That big bundle of blatantly silly, sweaty*1 activity that staggers across our screens every four years*2 in a senseless, pointless display of blatant commercialism. In a world were money talks and bullshit walks, here it runs. Or rides a bike. Or swims. Or plays baseball. Or possibly basketball.
And this time around, bullshit rode a BMX. Really. Ugh.
A traditionalist at heart, I lost interest in the Olympics about fifty years before I was born. Team games are not Olympic sports. The Olympics are about individual achievement, not how much money your country can pour into the events. Basketball is not an Olympic sport. Baseball is not a sport, never mind an Olympic sport. Beach volleyball? Give me a break*3. Football should not be in there*4.
And professional athletes? Are you kidding? So, like, the all-professional USA basketball team who, remember, get paid multi-million dollar salaries to play the game every day, took on an amateur Spanish team and won, and everybody is sitting around with their jaws dropped. Are you kidding? Hellooooo.. Pros?
Look, I realise that Michael Phelps is the only living proof that women and dolphins can produce viable offspring, but as a guy who gets paid to swim, he has no place is a decent Olympics. It wasn't that long ago that the Olympic committee were arguing over whether being a skiing instructor counted as making a living from skiing, and thus made one a professional skier, and therefore ineligible for Olympic competition. Now we have a guy getting million dollar bonuses for every medal he wins?
Don't get me wrong, what the guy has achieved is amazing. More gold than anyone in history, and second only to Larissa Latynina in total number of medals, and she's retired whereas Phelps probably has another Olympics (or maybe even two - in 2016 he'll be 31, older than most Olympians but by no means too old to compete) in him. The IOC needs to make up its mind about pro athletes. Having some sports allow all-pro, some only having semi-pro, and some rare (like boxing) still insisting on all-amateur, it's a mish-mash of silliness.
If the IOC are intent on upholding the Olympic ideal, ban all professional participation. If they are intent on showcasing the world's best sporting talents, remove all restrictions. But go one way or another, yes? Shit, as they say, or get off the pot.
Still, I was proud to see that Great Britain won 19 gold, 4th behind China (51), USA (36), and Russia (23) and 47 medals total, again 4th behind USA (110), China (100) and Russia (72).
Of course, there's still one Olympic pleasure available. That of the running. Specifically, the long-distance running. The 3000m, the 1500m, the marathon, where some stick insect who weighs 9 stone holding a suitcase full of lard, who probably trains by running around the dirt track that encircles his village, from an impoverished African nation whose total contribution to his Olympic bid was the clothes he's standing in and his plane ticket, who goes out onto the field and proceeds who whup the absolute pants off of all the multi-million dollar athletes from rich countries who train in climate-controlled facilities with legions of coaches and computer-aided training schedules.
That's the Olympic spirit, right there.
-------------------------------------------------
*1: Any activity that involves sweat but not at least one orgasm is clearly and obviously silly, ridiculous and entirely without merit.
*2: I don't count the Winter Olympics as being as bad as the Summer Olympics. At least at the Winter games there is the prospect of seeing a tobogganist crash on the first turn and then complete the entire course on his arse.
*3: Hate the game; love the women in tiny bikinis bouncing around. Not a sport, more like really soft porn. The only things that could improve beach volleyball are oil or thongs. Both, preferably.
*4: No, I don't mean "soccer". Soccer is a game played on lazy Sunday afternoons whilst waiting for the pub to open, and involves two piles of coats as a goal and one person inefficiently trying to explain the offside rule. Football is The Beautiful Game, involving 22 men, green grass, and a football. Where you use your feet.
And this time around, bullshit rode a BMX. Really. Ugh.
A traditionalist at heart, I lost interest in the Olympics about fifty years before I was born. Team games are not Olympic sports. The Olympics are about individual achievement, not how much money your country can pour into the events. Basketball is not an Olympic sport. Baseball is not a sport, never mind an Olympic sport. Beach volleyball? Give me a break*3. Football should not be in there*4.
And professional athletes? Are you kidding? So, like, the all-professional USA basketball team who, remember, get paid multi-million dollar salaries to play the game every day, took on an amateur Spanish team and won, and everybody is sitting around with their jaws dropped. Are you kidding? Hellooooo.. Pros?
Look, I realise that Michael Phelps is the only living proof that women and dolphins can produce viable offspring, but as a guy who gets paid to swim, he has no place is a decent Olympics. It wasn't that long ago that the Olympic committee were arguing over whether being a skiing instructor counted as making a living from skiing, and thus made one a professional skier, and therefore ineligible for Olympic competition. Now we have a guy getting million dollar bonuses for every medal he wins?
Don't get me wrong, what the guy has achieved is amazing. More gold than anyone in history, and second only to Larissa Latynina in total number of medals, and she's retired whereas Phelps probably has another Olympics (or maybe even two - in 2016 he'll be 31, older than most Olympians but by no means too old to compete) in him. The IOC needs to make up its mind about pro athletes. Having some sports allow all-pro, some only having semi-pro, and some rare (like boxing) still insisting on all-amateur, it's a mish-mash of silliness.
If the IOC are intent on upholding the Olympic ideal, ban all professional participation. If they are intent on showcasing the world's best sporting talents, remove all restrictions. But go one way or another, yes? Shit, as they say, or get off the pot.
Still, I was proud to see that Great Britain won 19 gold, 4th behind China (51), USA (36), and Russia (23) and 47 medals total, again 4th behind USA (110), China (100) and Russia (72).
Of course, there's still one Olympic pleasure available. That of the running. Specifically, the long-distance running. The 3000m, the 1500m, the marathon, where some stick insect who weighs 9 stone holding a suitcase full of lard, who probably trains by running around the dirt track that encircles his village, from an impoverished African nation whose total contribution to his Olympic bid was the clothes he's standing in and his plane ticket, who goes out onto the field and proceeds who whup the absolute pants off of all the multi-million dollar athletes from rich countries who train in climate-controlled facilities with legions of coaches and computer-aided training schedules.
That's the Olympic spirit, right there.
-------------------------------------------------
*1: Any activity that involves sweat but not at least one orgasm is clearly and obviously silly, ridiculous and entirely without merit.
*2: I don't count the Winter Olympics as being as bad as the Summer Olympics. At least at the Winter games there is the prospect of seeing a tobogganist crash on the first turn and then complete the entire course on his arse.
*3: Hate the game; love the women in tiny bikinis bouncing around. Not a sport, more like really soft porn. The only things that could improve beach volleyball are oil or thongs. Both, preferably.
*4: No, I don't mean "soccer". Soccer is a game played on lazy Sunday afternoons whilst waiting for the pub to open, and involves two piles of coats as a goal and one person inefficiently trying to explain the offside rule. Football is The Beautiful Game, involving 22 men, green grass, and a football. Where you use your feet.
19.2.08
I should stop, but I just don't wanna
I've been trawling around looking for the best (and worst) jabs at the Patriots.
First, here's one that, I assume, came from last year when the Colts, under Peyton Manning, beat the Patriots against the odds to go to the Superbowl:
Next, we bridge the gap, with Peyton passing the torch to younger brother Eli:
This sums it up, I think:
It's a bitch:
It's not nice to mock the afflicted, but here we go anyway:
X-Box Game Unveils Secret Bonus:
And what was that record again?
And, finally..
First, here's one that, I assume, came from last year when the Colts, under Peyton Manning, beat the Patriots against the odds to go to the Superbowl:
Next, we bridge the gap, with Peyton passing the torch to younger brother Eli:
This sums it up, I think:
It's a bitch:
It's not nice to mock the afflicted, but here we go anyway:
X-Box Game Unveils Secret Bonus:
And what was that record again?
And, finally..
Define "Irony"
Okay, so this is not so much ironic as it is abso-friggin-lutely hilarious, but it seems that the New England Patriots filed applications to trademark the phrases "19-0" and "19-0: The Perfect Season", almost a month before the Superbowl.
The word "hubris" means exaggerated and overwhelming - but unwarranted - pride and self-confidence, and is often used in conjunction with the concept of the subject getting his or her comeuppance.
Maybe Bob Kraft needed to have a slave standing at his shoulder whispering "look not so proud, for the football gods are jealous" as he rode in triumph into Foxborough.
Story tipped by the NY Post and their story about kids in Nicaragua being gifted with the now unnecessary Patriots "19-0" Superbowl XLII Champions t-shirts and hats.
The word "hubris" means exaggerated and overwhelming - but unwarranted - pride and self-confidence, and is often used in conjunction with the concept of the subject getting his or her comeuppance.
Maybe Bob Kraft needed to have a slave standing at his shoulder whispering "look not so proud, for the football gods are jealous" as he rode in triumph into Foxborough.
Story tipped by the NY Post and their story about kids in Nicaragua being gifted with the now unnecessary Patriots "19-0" Superbowl XLII Champions t-shirts and hats.
8.2.08
An Open Letter To That Patriots Fan
Dear Patriots Fan,
I don't - in most cases - know your name, just the various online handles you use in various chatrooms, message boards and forums. Be it PatriotsFan, bradyisgod, patsrule2007, or whatever else you could come up with, you are the gestalt entity which has earned the ire of NFL fandom.
For almost 5 months now you've been strutting around like the cock of the walk, secure in your team's dominance of the NFL, confidently and arrogantly predicting the perfect season. With nary a glance towards spelling, and a barely a brush with grammar, we've had to hear about how the team from New England are "the graetest in the histry of the game".
Sometimes you seem to have a keyboard without a working shift key, as capital letters elude you, even in your beloved QB "tom bradey".
Also apparent, and almost as often, is your tenuous grasp of punctuation. Great long paragraphs of bile and shameless fawning, broken by not a single comma or full stop, declaring for all the world "I am an ignorant bastard and I am either so stupid as to be unaware of it, or simply arrogant enough to be proud of it," or, as you would put it, "im dum n i dont care."
You've dismissed mention of the Patriots long-time cheating as "haters" and ignored any attempt to discuss relative merits or historical evidence.
No, this season you've made being a fan of any other team a frustrating experience.
And now you're going to whine because it's all coming back on you?
Karma's a bitch.
Yes, you lost.
The Lord High-And-Mighty, Master Of The Comeback, Great And Powerful Engineer Of The Last-Minute Game-Winning Drive, The Golden Boy, The Man Himself, "tom bradey", couldn't hit a cow's arse with a shovel at the end of that game because the Giants had been doing exactly what fans around the league have been saying for months: plow the field with Brady's face.
I'll leave the analysis for another time. But we were right, you were wrong: Any team that rattles Brady beats the Patriots.
But you refuse to even acknowledge the loss. There are rumblings of cheating, rumblings of biased refs. How absurd.
You lost. You've spent 5 months giving it out, and now it's time for you to take it.
And, yes, that means from everybody. Even Dolphins fans have the right to mock you for your stupidity.
All the jokes, all the ribbing, the names, the insults, these are your due. Take it like a man, even if that means most of you will have to fake it.
Maybe, like the sword going to the forge, this experience will help you. It may be next year, it may be in ten years time, but the next time your "pats" go 7-0, 8-0, 10-0, 12-0, perhaps you'll reserve judgment because you've seen how the mighty can fall.
Maybe, in a future season, if your "pats" go 18-0 to the Superbowl again, even then, maybe - just maybe - you'll hold your tongue and stay away from the message boards with your ridiculous guarantees and silly hyperbole.
Maybe, next time the "pats" start building a nice undefeated season, and the idiots swarm out of the woodwork to take possession of the Superbowl on week 7, you'll be one of the calm heads cautioning patience and wisdom.
And maybe this experience will make you a better friend, a better fan, and a better person.
Maybe.
See you next season.
And remember, 31 coaches now have the Patriots' number, thanks to the Giants.
I don't - in most cases - know your name, just the various online handles you use in various chatrooms, message boards and forums. Be it PatriotsFan, bradyisgod, patsrule2007, or whatever else you could come up with, you are the gestalt entity which has earned the ire of NFL fandom.
For almost 5 months now you've been strutting around like the cock of the walk, secure in your team's dominance of the NFL, confidently and arrogantly predicting the perfect season. With nary a glance towards spelling, and a barely a brush with grammar, we've had to hear about how the team from New England are "the graetest in the histry of the game".
Sometimes you seem to have a keyboard without a working shift key, as capital letters elude you, even in your beloved QB "tom bradey".
Also apparent, and almost as often, is your tenuous grasp of punctuation. Great long paragraphs of bile and shameless fawning, broken by not a single comma or full stop, declaring for all the world "I am an ignorant bastard and I am either so stupid as to be unaware of it, or simply arrogant enough to be proud of it," or, as you would put it, "im dum n i dont care."
You've dismissed mention of the Patriots long-time cheating as "haters" and ignored any attempt to discuss relative merits or historical evidence.
No, this season you've made being a fan of any other team a frustrating experience.
And now you're going to whine because it's all coming back on you?
Karma's a bitch.
Yes, you lost.
The Lord High-And-Mighty, Master Of The Comeback, Great And Powerful Engineer Of The Last-Minute Game-Winning Drive, The Golden Boy, The Man Himself, "tom bradey", couldn't hit a cow's arse with a shovel at the end of that game because the Giants had been doing exactly what fans around the league have been saying for months: plow the field with Brady's face.
I'll leave the analysis for another time. But we were right, you were wrong: Any team that rattles Brady beats the Patriots.
But you refuse to even acknowledge the loss. There are rumblings of cheating, rumblings of biased refs. How absurd.
You lost. You've spent 5 months giving it out, and now it's time for you to take it.
And, yes, that means from everybody. Even Dolphins fans have the right to mock you for your stupidity.
All the jokes, all the ribbing, the names, the insults, these are your due. Take it like a man, even if that means most of you will have to fake it.
Maybe, like the sword going to the forge, this experience will help you. It may be next year, it may be in ten years time, but the next time your "pats" go 7-0, 8-0, 10-0, 12-0, perhaps you'll reserve judgment because you've seen how the mighty can fall.
Maybe, in a future season, if your "pats" go 18-0 to the Superbowl again, even then, maybe - just maybe - you'll hold your tongue and stay away from the message boards with your ridiculous guarantees and silly hyperbole.
Maybe, next time the "pats" start building a nice undefeated season, and the idiots swarm out of the woodwork to take possession of the Superbowl on week 7, you'll be one of the calm heads cautioning patience and wisdom.
And maybe this experience will make you a better friend, a better fan, and a better person.
Maybe.
See you next season.
And remember, 31 coaches now have the Patriots' number, thanks to the Giants.
3.2.08
And It's Over
Giants 17-14 Patriots.
What a wonderful world. And now it's been proved that cheaters never win and winners never cheat, the Patriots, it seems, are about to get theirs.
I've never been a Giants fan, and I never will be, except for tonight.
What a wonderful world. And now it's been proved that cheaters never win and winners never cheat, the Patriots, it seems, are about to get theirs.
I've never been a Giants fan, and I never will be, except for tonight.
It's here...
Today is the day when we find out, once and for all, whether cheaters win and whether winners cheat.
Good luck to the Giants. You'll need it against the Patriots and the refs. Just don't dare say so or they'll fine you.
Good luck to the Giants. You'll need it against the Patriots and the refs. Just don't dare say so or they'll fine you.
"It's hard to go out there and play the Patriots and the refs at the same time," McAlister said. "They put the crown on top of them, they want them to win. They won."
27.1.08
Happy Winter-een-mas to you and yours.
We at Legal Alien wish you and yours a happy Winter-een-mas and hope you inflict much ownage on this most sacred of gamer's holidays.
Ownage be with you.
Ownage be with you.
1.1.08
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