What do you think I am, a radio?

This article appeared in John Tierney's column in The New York Times a couple of days ago about the primal origins of human laughter, and starts off with a muffin joke about as funny as everyone's line about the penguin. As you would guess, some would laugh at seemingly unfunny jokes, but why?

The human ha-ha evolved from the rhythmic sound — pant-pant — made by primates like chimpanzees when they tickle and chase one other while playing. Jaak Panksepp, a neuroscientist and psychologist at Washington State University, discovered that rats emit an ultrasonic chirp (inaudible to humans without special equipment) when they’re tickled, and they like the sensation so much they keep coming back for more tickling.

He and Professor Provine figure that the first primate joke — that is, the first action to produce a laugh without physical contact — was the feigned tickle, the same kind of coo-chi-coo move parents make when they thrust their wiggling fingers at a baby. Professor Panksepp thinks the brain has ancient wiring to produce laughter so that young animals learn to play with one another. The laughter stimulates euphoria circuits in the brain and also reassures the other animals that they’re playing, not fighting.

Laughter stimulating euphoria circuits? Sounds like I need some more humor in my life.

The article goes on to theorize that laughter may also be a method used to establish social hierarchies and gain allies if you're low on the totem pole. So don't make fun of that ditzy blonde or clueless guy (which often times is me) when they laugh at your bad jokes--they're just trying to make friends.

If there's no one to pick on, where's the fun?

Wow. Remember when I commented that I had that fleeting feeling of disgruntlement with 300 because of its possible racial undertones with the depiction of Persians as the evil villains trying to disrupt the society of the good guys representing Western civilization? Well, I let it pass, and enjoyed the movie for the entertaining action movie that it was. But it turns out the Iranian government isn't so amused. Apparently, Xerxes is considered sort of a legend in Iran, and Iranians, who are direct descendants of the Persians, were quite offended by the movie:

Warner Bros.' "300" is being greeted in Iran with about as much warmth as a U.N. weapons inspector.

While U.S. auds see the film as a comicbook come to life -- replete with hyperstylized action and broadly drawn heroes and villains -- it has a deeper resonance in the Mideast, where it's seen as a distorted view of very real events.

"Hollywood declares war on Iranians," exclaimed a headline in Iranian daily Ayandeh-No.

Javad Shangari, a cultural adviser to Iranian prexy Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, attacked the film as being "part of a comprehensive U.S. psychological warfare aimed at Iranian culture."

This leads me to wonder who you can depict as the bad guys in television and film these days, without pissing off a major ethnic group or country, regardless if it's fiction or historically accurate. 300 may have come out at a somewhat inopportune moment, but history seems to remember that the Persians got beat by the Greeks. It's difficult to distort that too much, although I guess if a national hero of mine were depicted as an overgrown, overplucked, and high maintenance homosexual, I'd be a bit miffed, too.

Me? Pass up a free cup of joe? I think not...

It's not that I'm that big a fan of Starbucks Coffee, but I have this strange desire to hit up every Starbucks in St. Louis, and get a free cup of coffee. Something about the word "free" linked with anything that's edible somehow perks up that part of my brain that must be intimately connected to my belly. I really need to learn how to rewire my head.

Lotus Dreams

My youngest Brother-in-Law turned 21 yesterday, and I left work early and picked up Tellulah so we could drive down to Boulder to meet all of her family for a birthday dinner. It was 70 degrees yesterday with not a cloud in the sky, and there were legs and breasts on display everywhere. But the only thing I cared about, the Lotus Elise the exact color as the one above that went zooming around us outside Boulder. A rare car to begin with, it is even rarer on the pothole scarred, gravel covered roads of Colorado. I don't remember the last time I saw a Lotus, and it immediately made me think of Swany. Nice taste in cars there buddy. I'm still drooling.

In case you felt like quitting your day job...

Hold that Gas-Ex! For some reason, I think Firecracker George could easily pick up this talent:

Legend has is that one day, while swimming, Pujol discovered his unique ability. As he took a deep breath before submerging, he felt water enter his rear. He soon discovered that, with abdominal control, he could deliberately suck water in through his anus and project it back out with great force. Further experimentation led him to discover that he could also do the same with air and, by varying pressures, he could produce distinct notes.

Pujol became the first flatulence musician. It was a skill that eventually made him the most well-known and highest paid entertainer in all of France.

Read more about "The Fartiste" here.

With W.M. Scratch and his own unique tricks, this could make for quite an eclectic variety show.

Troop escalation? Forget that. Send in Chuck Norris...

What pathetic excuses for men we are. This past weekend on March 10th marked the 67th annual Chuck Norris Day. In tribute, I give you perhaps the greatest role Chuck Norris ever played--Major Scott McCoy in The Delta Force:



(Extra Chuck Norris trivia: Did you know his first name is actually Carlos?)

Was it just me, or did anyone else feel like they had to go home and do some sit-ups after this movie?

Hmmm. With all the hype behind this movie (from myself included), the stellar box-office returns it raked in for its opening weekend ($70 million), and the fact that it enthusiastically had Frank Miller's endorsement as being completely faithful to his source material, I'm almost a bit afraid to write my opinions about 300 on this page, for fear I'll be ridiculed and thrown off a cliff like a defective Spartan baby. But my fortune cookie from last Saturday's dinner said, "Do what you believe is right," so I'll just say it--300 wasn't great, it was just OK.

The star of this film, of course, was the stylized visuals created with a mix of cinematography and green screen CGI magic. The faded out colors with the somewhat golden-bronze wash emphasizing the crimson red of blood and ominous shadows certainly make this film look more like a painting than a movie, and pays respect to its graphic novel origins. This may be the only reason why I would highly recommend seeing 300 on the big screen before it hits DVD. Unfortunatly, I think there may have been too much exposure to the final product in the promotional trailers prior to the film's openings. I remember seeing The Matrix for the first time and being completely blown away by the bullet time visuals that completely changed how action films were shot ever since. With 300, I wasn't so much impressed, as I was satisfied, having seen so much of the slow-motion/realtime-motion action sequences prior to sitting in the theater.

The biggest disappointment with the film, though, was that I never really got the sense of the importance of this battle. There's a lot of talk about fighting for freedom and the preservation of Greece, but I never got the essence of what that really meant. Was living under Persian rule really that bad? I don't know. Perhaps the modern take on this story and its implications on the world as we know it today is that the stand of the 300 helped preserve Greece, and therefore Western civilization. Instead of the United States being the world superpower it is today, the Middle East would be the center of the world had the 300 crumbled easily under Xerxes armies. No wonder audiences are trying to weave some political propaganda into this movie. But that's just me trying to put some greater importance on this event in history--the director never really developed that for me, which is a shame.

The secondary story with the Spartan Queen trying to rally up reinforcements for her husband seemed unnecessary. In the end, her efforts seemingly had no impact on anything that went on in the movie, and may only have been included to give the audience a bit of a break from the tense action going on at Thermopylae. And although I can't say I mind seeing Lena Headey's boobies, the sex scene between her and Gerard Butler seemed a bit gratuitous to me. I guess we're supposed to understand the deep love between Leonidas and his queen after this, which is supposed to resonate throughout the entire movie until his glorious death, but it just doesn't work. In fact, Gladiator, a film where you only get a glimpsing shot of the protagonists family, does a much better job of conveying that sense of family longing without resorting to some cheap eye candy to pander to the nerdiest of comic book fanboys out there.

Alas, in my mind, 300 will fall short of being the groundbreaking film that the hype made it out to be. Essentially, it was good action movie eye candy that was entertaining, but not all that satisfying. Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow actually already accomplished much of what 300 does visually, and has since been lost in the bins of DVD obscurity. Both of these films essentially forget what makes a truly great film--characters and good plot development. But until a director can meld these new technologies to tell a compelling story, I guess we'll have to snack on these kind of movies for awhile.

Let the arguments commence--the comments section is now open.

(**1/2 out of *****)

This post is...meh...

Occasionally, I catch Firecracker George throwing in a "meh" in his posts or comments. I never really thought much of it, but apparently its use is beginning to catch on, and The Simpsons yet again may be responsible for it. From The Guardian:

He thinks, however, it sprang into common usage from the Simpsons.

I can enlighten him further. Some credit the 2001 episode Hungry Hungry Homer with the first use of "meh" as a dismissal, when Homer asks Lisa and Bart if they want to go to the Blockoland theme park and receives the answer, "meh". But the Language Log website notes a 1995 episode in which Bart dismisses Marge's discussion of weaving with a "meh".

The article also goes on to say that "meh" is not suitable for inclusion in the Oxford English Dictionary, but it's principal editor for new words has a "meh" file. Can you imagine a whole file cabinet with each folder being a different word? He's probably got a whole file for "booty."

300 hasn't even premiered, and he's already creating buzz for his next movie...

Of course, the video above is yet another trailer for 300. It's a bit NSFW for some decapitations and a couple of flashes of boobies (the female kind, not the pumped up man ones). I post this not to go overboard with the 300 praise before I've even seen it, but to tell you that according to Ain't It Cool News, a flash of Rorschach that Zack Snyder intentionally put in as an Easter egg is 1 minute 52 seconds in. If anyone's forgotten, Synder is already in preproduction for the film adaptation of Watchmen, and the photo of Rorschach is from one of the test shots he's been working with.

It's not as frakked up as you think...

I know Battlestar Galactica has ended up on some of your "probation" lists, but I hope everyone caught the most recent episode "Maelstrom" this past Sunday. For those that did not or have ignored all the blog traffic related to the ending of that episode, I'll write the spoiler info here in invisotext:

They killed off Starbuck! Or at least she won't be in the show for awhile until they resurrect her character somehow. Perhaps she's one of the final five?

Some promising news I found out while listening to the Ronald D. Moore podcast commentary this week while driving in my car is that he considers this episode sort of the beginning of the third and final act of the show, meaning he does see an end in sight. Most rumor boards say that he's aiming for a five season run which would allow him to develop the underlying mythology enough to bring it to a final conclusion, and to make the Hollywood executives happy since this is the magic number that allows for syndication later on.

Another interesting tidbit from the podcast: The ending scene with Edward James Olmos where he demolishes his model ship was completely improvised. Apparently, the ship was a museum-quality piece worth tens of thousands of dollars that the set designers were actually just renting to use for the show which Olmos was completely unaware of. I wonder who gets the bill for that?

Oh, the irony...

America...f*ck yeah!

That video post from a couple of days ago? Complete coincidence.

So the top news from the world of comic books today is the death of Captain America. Coming off the heels of Marvel Comics recent crossover event, Civil War, Steve Rogers turns himself in to the authorities after leading a group of heroes against the government who has required official registration of all superpowered beings. Apparently, as he's leaving a courthouse, he's gunned down by a sniper. A sniper. Lame.

I actually picked up all seven issues of Civil War, but I honestly thought it was pretty ho-hum with a storyline that I actually thought was a bit stupid. About the only reason I was still shelling out money for this thing was the art by Steve McNiven. The impetus behind this major comic book event was the post 9/11 world we live in, but in the end, I don't think this limited series lived up to the inspiration. We needed a story with a bit more grit and substance, rather than a easy excuse to have two page spreads of all out "war" between superheroes.

Perhaps I'm being too harsh, though. After all, some comic books still should be for kids. Still, children shouldn't be subjected to such lousy storylines. I just hope the way they resurrect Captain America isn't equally as lame as how they made him die. And you know they will resurrect him. No superhero with this much history really dies in the comic universe.

I've been bad.

I've been fretting lately over some of my responses. True, I think that they're funny and I giggle my ass off when I'm writing them, but I feel like I've sabotaged some potentially good discussions with my silliness. My most recent transgression is going wild and wacky on Swany T's post. I really don't want bears to eat libs and dems. We should use crocodiles.

But really I'm thinking in particular of Wild Willie's post a few weeks back about what inspires us. I didn't really have an answer, or rather I didn't know how to articulate my answer. The humor wasn't a substitute, however. I was just being a goof. From some people I might accept indignation that I didn't respond with a serious answer, but not from Wild Willie. (Did you know that if your aunt had balls...) Still, it was a very good topic that I unwittingly sabotaged. Sorry W2. I wanted to bring it back up, but then I didn't want it look as if I'd bollixed W2's attempt only to then say, "hey, I've got this great idea..."

So sorry if I'm screwing up people's post. Please feel free to reiterate the idea or get us back on topic, because I don't think that I can stop myself.

With all the building hype, this better be much better than Cats...

Frank Miller seems to be the hot topic du jour at the moment. I seem to be finding specials and articles about him all over the media from television, to radio, to print. Even Esquire magazine of all places has a brief interview of him in their most recent issue. Yes, we were all much more GQ than we realized back in the day when we were already talking about The Dark Knight Returns, Batman: Year One, and Miller's run on Daredevil. ;-)

Of course, this is all part of the publicity machine trying to build up buzz for the premiere of 300 this weekend. Wander has already posted about what we might expect with this movie, so I won't belabor the point. Interestingly, though, this movie is generating quite a bit of unexpected controversy, with some audiences trying to tease out political overtones in Miller's story that weren't his intentions. From The New York Times:

Shortly after his press-junket grilling Mr. Snyder — an established commercials director, whose best-known previous credit was a remake of George Romero’s “Dawn of the Dead” — ran into some surprising reactions at the Berlinale film festival in Germany. Some attendees walked out of a screening there, while others insisted on seeing its presentation of the Spartans’ defense of Western civilization in the face of a Persian horde as propaganda for America’s position vis-à-vis Iraq and Iran. (By contrast it drew applause at a Los Angeles screening last month.)

Perhaps the oddest thing about this political slant on 300 is that different audiences have come up with completely opposite views of how this so-called allegory to the Bush administration matches up, with some seeing George W. Bush as the invading Persian emperor Xerxes and others seeing him as the Spartan king Leonidas. Stranger still, this is a story that predates the existence of modern civilization that has been used countless times simply as an example of sheer bravery, and not as some political flagpole. Or maybe Herodotus really was that prescient.

To be honest, though, I did have a slight wave of disgruntlement when I was watching the trailer for the movie a couple of nights ago. Is there something to be said about the racial aspects of a movie where the "good guys" are all essentially white and the invading "bad guys" are made up not only of Persians, but also deformed freaks of nature?

But now I'm convinced I'm thinking way too much. Frankly, I could care less about it's political or social implications. I just want to see it because it looks damn cool.

For those needing to stretch your brain a bit and procrastinate from work...

I've been seeing this "Name the 50 States in 10 Minutes" quiz posted on various websites and blogs. I figured it would take me, at most, a couple of minutes, but it actually took me almost the entire 10 because I got stuck on one state. Strangely, it wasn't some obscure place I've never been to--it was a state I've actually visited many times. Odd how your brain can blank out on a seemingly easy list to recite when it doesn't have any visual clues to help. Or maybe I just need more sleep.

Free Floyd!

The professional cycling season is already underway, but this year's races are still suffering from the specter of doping that has carried over from last year. Perhaps the greatest cyclist of the last few years whose name is not Lance Armstrong recently announced his retirement. After being a winner and runner-up five times in the Tour de France, Jan Ullrich has decided to call it quits while still in the midst of unfounded accusations stemming from the doping investigations of "Operation Puerto" in Spain that shook up the entire field last year. Ivan Basso, an Italian rider who is the heir apparent to the Tour de France throne, switched teams after being dropped from CSC due to the allegations and now rides with Lance Armstrong's old Discovery Channel Team this year. He, too, has had to defend himself from the "Operation Puerto" fall-out after being named in the scandal. Yet despite being cleared by his own country's athletic governing body and never actually being proven to be guilty of doping by anyone, rumor has it that the organizers of the Tour de France may still elect to ban him from the race later this summer.

I'm not quite sure what the governing bodies of professional cycling are trying to accomplish with this "guilty until proven innocent" stance they've taken on the problem of illegal performance enhancements. Some of the best riders who may very well be innocent are being pushed out of the sport, leaving a field of relative mediocrity instead to watch. Last year's Tour de France was a prime example of a legendary race being whittled down to a group of obscure riders all on the basis of unproven accusations. And even when the race gets interesting and tries to create new heroes, the sloppy systems of doping accusations and detection manage to screw it up. This brings me to last year's Tour de France champion, Floyd Landis.

As you may recall, Floyd Landis was reported to have had relatively large amounts of testosterone found in his urine samples following a dramatic ride in the Alps where he essentially won the Tour. Further radioisotope testing seemed to put the nail in the coffin by showing that the testosterone in the urine sample was synthetic in nature. Floyd adamantly denied the accusations, but his defense looked pretty paper thin by this time.

But not so fast. In the offseason, Floyd Landis and his defense team have come up with some interesting findings, and what seemed to be insurmountable evidence proving he was using performance enhancing drugs, definitely seems to have some holes. A summary of their defense case can be found on the Floyd Fairness website, but the major points as I understand them are as follows:

1. Floyd's urine sample was mislabeled more than once. Although possibly just a technical issue, this raises some doubt as to whether the "positive" sample was even his at all.
   
2. There is evidence that the urine sample was either contaminated or underwent a significant amount of degradation. As such, any testing resulting from those samples were spurious, and the sample probably shouldn't have undergone further testing at all.
   
3. The lab which ran the tests reported extreme variability in the results obtained from Floyd's urine with one being within the range of normal, and the other raising the suspicion for doping. Since their results on the same sample were so different, the ability of this lab to produce reliable lab results is suspect.
   
4. With carbon isotope testing, a sample must test postive for four testosterone metabolites to be considered a true positive test. However, Floyd's sample only came up positive for one, meaning he didn't even test positive for synthetic testosterone.

I have remained in the Landis camp since the accusations started, and this defense case only strengthens my stance that Floyd Landis is clean and is the true champion of the 2006 Tour de France.

Another American cyclist, Tyler Hamilton, will return to the cycling arena this season after serving a two year suspension on grounds of blood doping that he's vehemently denied to this day. His case has some similarities to Floyd's, as the timing of his supposed use of a performance boost didn't seem to make any logical sense, and he, too, has extreme doubts about the laboratory methods used. I can only hope that Floyd doesn't fall to a similar fate as Tyler. Two years can be a long time.

The motto of American patriotism...

Another jingle to get stuck in your head for the day. It's NSFW for profanity, so beware:

It's so hard to say 'goodbye' to the pretty ones.

Here I am, blogging away on a Saturday night. Although the past few weeks have been about chasing girlies in the real world, this party night finds me e-wooing. And, *sigh* I'm afraid yet another crop of beautiful babies won't work out for this unassuming turtle.

It's so hard to say goodbye to the pretty ones.

Two of the most active - and attractive - matches on eHarmony just sent a disheartening "Must Have"; ten things we choose from a long list of things we must have in a partner. Dig what they sent:

Industriousness...... I must have someone who is willing to work hard at whatever they do.

And I had such hope.

One even sent along Ambitious and Organized, and then reiterated in her "Can't Stands" (obviously the flip side) with:

Lazy...... I can't stand someone who likes to spend excessive time sleeping, resting or being a "couch potato."

They're sending these to a man whose personal motto is, "Hard work is for people short on talent."

I had to level with Miss Type AAAAAAA. My next question is below, verbaitm:

Organized,industrious, ambitious...hmmm. I'd like to continue with you, but I need to be honest. I am organized, industrious, and ambitious only about the things that are important to me. Nothing else gets my best. Does this kill it for us?

If I ever hear from her again I will be truly flabergasted. And it's a shame too, because she is a knock out. But I know that I will find a way to soldier on...

...because every day I get between six and eight matches.

Heh heh heh.

Pharmacy adventures

While out looking at houses to lease I stopped at a pharmacy to get Monty's glucosamine for his doggy arthritis. While I was there, I gots me a chocolate bar, because I'm so rad. Eating it in the car, the crumbs fell on my lap and melted from the heat. I've got chocolate on my khakis.

So I look like I crapped myself backwards.

I swear this only happens to pants I have to iron.

One interesting thing did happen though. While I was oogling Christina No-underwear-a on the cover of Maxim, a voice came from behind, "that's contraband." It was a lady, who was pulling my leg. However, she thought of it because when she tried to send a Maxim or FHM to her grandson in Afghanistan, they told her that she couldn't because it was contraband. She then rightly asserted that if her grandson was ordered to war, then he should be able to look at a quasi-nudie mag. I of course agreed.

She then showed me the black bracelet she wears printed with his birthday and deathday. He was barely 21.

So, I'm glad that I'm 32, and that my biggest worry is the chocolate on my pants.

Even when she's not in the news, she's making news...

Apparently, the Associated Press has tried to place an internal moratorium on publishing stories on the AP wire having to do with Paris Hilton:

In the Observer article Washington [the AP wire editor] was quoted as saying, "There was a surprising amount of hand-wringing. A lot of people in the newsroom were saying this was tampering with the news."

I'm sure a mob full of So-Cal teenagers and the entire subscription base of Us Weekly are amassing right now as we speak to protest this blatant infringement of their First Amendment rights.