I guess this is one way to disguise yourself in a hurry...

I was never much of a guy to wear hoodies all that often, nor was I ever much of a fan of Marc Ecko fashion, but damn is this get-up cool (well, in a geeky Star Wars kind of way).  It's probably much more hip than the backpack that looked like Yoda I saw hanging off some girl's back in the grocery store the other day.

On a tangential note, Marc Ecko is the guy that bought Barry Bond's home run record ball for $750,000+ and branded it with a big asterisk before donating it to the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown.  Classic.

No. 2 in the Country is Not Bad for Now

McCoy is the hottest quarterback in the league as Big 12 play begins. He's completing 80 percent of his passes, which leads the nation. And in a telling sort of stat, he's accounted for almost as many touchdowns (18) as incompletions (20).

Enough said.

A Birthday Present From Me To Me

What's it like to turn 35 in the midst of all this political and financial turmoil? A lot like it feels any other year actually. The good news is I still love awesome music. What more can a guy like me want?

As if the financial meltdown isn't depressing enough...

Paul Newman, a Magnetic Titan of Hollywood, Is Dead at 83

I could post something about JP Morgan's buyout of WaMu...

...or a host of other stories that point to what some financial experts are predicting to be the worst - and longest - financial downturn in the last quarter century, if not since the Great Depression.

I could post about how this is a prime example of the real outcome of laissez faire capitalism; about how without conscientious regulation, inevitably some assholes will figure out how to make a mint and then leave the taxpayers with the check.

I could post about these things, but instead this morning my mind has fixated on something else. Sometimes it's a blessing being half an idiot.

Today's Question

Any idea why I would post these two pictures together. Any thoughts no matter how random they may be are welcome. Of course you can always try to get the right answer too.

Does anyone else think that this is squirrley as hell?

We Aided Some Farms

Being at Farm Aid 2008 in Boston on Saturday was a once in a lifetime experience. We got the VIP treatment and got to see some of the best performances I've ever seen at a concert, much less a festival. Dave Mathews gave an acoustic performance that was so far removed from his usual sound it was like hearing him for the first time again. John Mellencamp was angry and as tight a rock and roll sound as you'll find away from Springsteen. But Neil Young stole the show with this Beatles number. I'm so happy I can say I was 10 rows away from this legendary event.

Now that's what I call an ego boost...

It must feel awesome to know that you could school LeBron James with a basketball:

Ayyyyyy, maties...

It's "Talk Like a Pirate Day!"  

I'm wishing for a Quantum of Solace after hearing this garbage...

The new theme song for the next 007 film Quantum of Solace leaked out onto the Internet.  Jack White + Alicia Keys sounded theoretically promising.  Unfortunately, that is all it will be--this song sucks. What a waste of waa-waa horns. I don't know if the peformers are to blame or David Arnold who wrote this thing. Where's John Barry when you need him? 

Addendum:  Oh, I guess Jack White wrote and produced this whole thing.  It doesn't change my opinion.  It still doesn't work for a Bond flick.  

Luckily, the movie itself still looks likes it's going to kick ass!

I'm fine, thanks for asking - Oh, wait. That's right, you didn't.

A hurricaine blows through Houston leaving 4 million people without power and thousands without water (including me on Saturday) and only Wild Willie and Wander bother to contact me. I've been friends with you dicks since we were kids and this whole hurricaine-hits-Houston-Firecracker-George-lives-in-Houston connection doesn't click with the three of you.

You are all officially on the shit list. I had former bosses call and check on me.

Can You Tell Me What This Picture Is?

Did you guess a chocolate pig with pieces of bacon next to it? If so you got it right. As I have wandered through this world in the past few years my subconscious has this gravitational pull to all things Kool-Aid Gang.

Recently I had the luxury of eating at a friends house where we all brought our respective dishes and one couple took the easy way out on desert and just had chocolate bars they had purchased from somewhere. When it came time to satiate our taste buds one last time I reached for the chocolate bar that had the red chilies in it. But then my eye caught Mo's Bacon Bar by Vosges, and I immediately thought of all my friends that frequent here.

I must say that my thought before trying the bar was skepticism, but after trying it I was pleasantly surprised. It had small bits of bacon in the chocolate that added a nice texture. The bacon tasted good and so did the chocolate. I would rate it a 7 out of 10. The Red Fire Exotic bar was the winner for me though coming in at 8 out of 10. Spicy chocolate has been a long favorite of mine so the comparison was probably unfair and you should take that into account when considering trying this lovely dessert. I don't know where they bought them but I know you can order them online. Try it out.

I thought this was too good not to share. From pointlessbanter.com

September 11 2008
Breaking Down the Presidential Campaign Using John Hughes Movies
By: Bobby Finstock on 09/11/08 @ 9:29 am

Barak Obama is Ferris Bueller (Ferris Beuller’s Day Off)
Ferris Bueller is liked by a lot of his classmates. Most of his classmates have no real concrete reason for liking him, they just do. I kind of feel the same way about Barak Obama, when you ask people why they like him you hear very little substance why. Both are slick and smooth and I imagine Obama could pull off being Abe Froman, Sausage King of Chicago. Plus they both live in Illinois so that has to count for something.


Joe Biden is Brian Johnson (Breakfast Club)
Brian Johnson at the end of the movie is the only one that doesn’t leave with a new girlfriend and is stuck writing the essay for Principal Vernon. I kind of feel like Biden is just left behind and forgotten compared to the other principles in the election. He is pretty much an afterthought like Brian.



McCain is Principal Richard Vernon (Breakfast Club)
Old, crotchety, and not well liked by younger people McCain matches up with Vernon well. I can imagine him saying the following:

Richard Vernon: You think about this: when you get old, these kids - when *I* get old - they’re going to be running the country…Now this is the thought that wakes me up in the middle of the night. That when I get older, these kids are going to take care of me.

I think Vernon would be so scared at those kids running the country he would try to stay in power to the bitter end.


Sarah Palin is Lisa (Weird Science)
You know somewhere McCain and his staff sat around like Anthony Michael Hall and Ilan Mitchell-Smith. with bras on their heads trying to create a perfect woman to run with him. Palin is a lot like Lisa, it just seems like she came out of nowhere and is everything her masters want. (well except the ethics violations and the knocked up kid) Plus I would tap that ass much like I would the young Kelly LeBrock.

The only place where the comparison fails is the accent. Lisa has that naughty british accent that somehow makes me want to sleep with Super Nanny. And Palin sounds like Francis McDormand in Fargo.


Howard Dean is The Geek (16 Candles)
Another Democrat and another Anthony Michael Hall reference. Dean just reminds me of a guy that would have to ask a woman to borrow their panties so he could show it to his friends, I don’t know why but I just get that feeling about him.





Michelle Obama is Tia Russell (Uncle Buck)
You kind of don’t like her at first. Some think she is miserable because she allegedly isn’t proud of this country. (I love how both sides can take a sound bite and manipulate it. You know like a pig wearing lipstick.) But in the end you come around on her and she isn’t so bad. Plus both have dated men with odd names… Barack for Michelle and Bug for Tia.


Cindy McCain is Caroline Mulford (16 Candles)
Caroline is the prom queen girlfriend of Jake in Sixteen Candles. Blond, good looking, WASPY, and believes that she shits gold… all three qualities that I think Cindy McCain has except she has way more houses that Caroline.


Bristol Palin is Kristy Briggs (She’s Having a Baby)
Yeah I think the title of the movie sums up the comparison. Except for one wasn’t going to be a shotgun wedding.




George W. Bush is Long Duk Dong (16 Candles)
They both butcher the English language and seem clueless half the time you see them. And I can imagine George rolling over and saying to Laura, “No more yankie my wankie. The Donger need food.”

Enough is enough...

For this entire presidential campaign season, I was really trying to keep an open mind about who I would vote for come November, and wait for the debates to decide. I truly believe John McCain is a decent guy and a true patriot. I was even willing to give the Sarah Palin VP pick a pass, 'cause what in the world was he supposed to do to get back in the race other than throw a wrench into the whole gameplan? However, the fact that he allowed this whole "lipstick on a pig" fiasco yesterday to not only grab 15 seconds of traction, but also approved a whole commercial completely distorting the original context of the quote, really rubbed me the wrong way and has totally destroyed any faith I had in the guy that he could truly stay above the fray. Sure, Karl Rove and his underlings are more than likely behind this whole thing (and even perhaps the whole disaster that is our involvement in Iraq), but McCain is still ultimately the man in charge of the tone of his campaign. If he lets sh*t-slinging like this through, I can't imagine what it would be like if he was in the Oval Office.

The worst thing about the whole "lipstick on a pig" business is that it's probably playing to a whole ignorant, uneducated demographic that perhaps saw a five second blurb about it and didn't stay to research the real context of how Obama used the phrase (or the fact that McCain has used the phrase himself in the same manner). We probably have a whole section of America that's convinced Obama is some sort of sexist based solely on the press of this thing.

So my vote is for Barack Obama. It probably won't count for much, given the electoral college system and the state I live in, but who cares?

And they do it all in style, too...

I'm not sure if I'm more impressed that none of these guys killed themselves or that neither of them ever dropped the camera.  The good stuff starts around the 2:20 mark:

We're all still alive. For now...

The Large Hadron Collider, the gigantic particle accelerator in Switzerland that has the potential (very minute potential) to create a black hole and suck all life as we know it into oblivion, went online yesterday.  They're only in the "warm-up" phase at this point, running protons around the 17 mile underground circuit, and haven't put them on collision courses just yet.  It looks like we have until at least late fall to eat Cheetos, pancakes, bacon, and beer until the end of times.

Anywho, looking through some of The New York Times about the Collider reminded me of why I love their website so much.  Not only are the articles diverse in topics and well written, their graphical illustrations that accompany many of their stories are worth a few minutes each day to look at.  Peruse the graphics from an earlier story about the LHC and you can get a somewhat clear understanding of what they're doing in those tunnels in Switzerland in less than a couple of minutes.

Awesome! More from my new favorite reporter.

I guess he has nothing to do now that his wingman Matthew McConaughey is busy with a girlfriend and a new baby...

If you haven't heard already, Lance Armstrong plans to come out of retirement to try and win the Tour de France next year, four years after he won his historic seventh.  The full Vanity Fair story is out now online.  

He'll be 37 years old at that time, and I'll be amazed if he actually pulls this off.  If he does manage to win, though, I'll be glad that he can finally put those doubts about whether he raced clean in years past to rest.

Suddenly, the Tour de France became so much more interesting again.

Sometimes there's just no gettin' around a bad day

In high school this is how I felt about where we all lived. NSFW due to language.

How cool would this be?

Shear speculation and rumor at this point, but according to Michael Caine, the suits at Warner Brothers are already considering a rather awesome pair of actors for the next Batman sequel. From Cinematical:

Here's what he told MTV: "I was with [a Warner Bros.] executive and I said, 'Are we going to make another one?' They said yeah. I said, 'How the hell are we going to top Heath? And he says 'I'll tell you how you top Heath - Johnny Depp as The Riddler and Philip Seymour Hoffman as The Penguin.' I said, 'S–t, they've done it again!'"

It's almost just as funny watching them without the animation...

Don't know if anyone's seen this video before of the Family Guy cast recording a show.  I never knew Seth McFarlane actually did so many of the voices.  And to follow up on a post from Firecracker George awhile back, check out the latter part of this video and see the guy who provides the voice for Cleveland--he's totally not what I pictured in my mind.

The greatest decade of music ever...

1000 music videos from the 80's.  'nuff said.

If the Red River Shootout wasn't enough reason to come to the State Fair of Texas...

I've had my share of odd fried foods in the past.  I ate my first fried Twinkie at the Missouri State Fair a few years back and had some fried Oreos and fried Ho-Ho's at the Iowa State Fair a couple of years ago.  I think I've even had a fried Snicker bar at some point in my life.  

And I'm sure I've mentioned my love for chicken fried steak somewhere on this blog.  

But low and behold what's in store for the upcoming State Fair of Texas combining two of my favorite foods--chicken fried BACON!!  I think I may go to hell just thinking about eating such a dish.  It's like porn for your taste buds.  Oh man, I'm in trouble.

No word yet on what the Mazda RX-8 does to a woman's libido...

I always knew there was something to the claim that chicks dig fast sports cars, so images like the one to the left are pure fantasy.  I guess there's no way to glamorize the fact that you're driving a Kia.  From Wired's Autopia blog:

David Moxon subjected 40 men and women to the sounds of a Maserati, Lamborghini and Ferrari, then measured the amount of testosterone in their saliva. He found everyone had higher levels of the stuff -- a measure of their arousal -- after hearing the revving exotics, but the amount the women had was off the charts.

The econobox, however, left everyone colder than a January day in Nome.

I guess Firecracker George was on to something when he got his last car, and must have women literally drooling testosterone when he passes by.  That, or he's a victim of more road rage.

He seems to smell of 'Cock...

Life must be a bit difficult with a last name like this.

Only two months left...

Part of me thinks, barring some inopportune remark by Joe Biden, Obama should win this election in a landslide. Throwing Sarah Palin into the mix does seem to make it interesting, though. Here's a site to keep a day to day track of what the polls are saying about the race.