Sighting #4, and I haven't even tapped into The Force yet...

I'm not even trying to look for these things, but I keep running into them. This R2 mailbox happened to be in "The Loop" district stationed right smack in front of Star Clipper, the shop I like to grab my comic books at here in St. Louis. I haven't bought any comics in a couple of weeks, which explains why I never saw this one earlier.

Considering these mailboxes were probably placed in locations where they expected high traffic from Star Wars fanatics, and I seem to stumble upon them accidentally, should I be worried about how much of a geek I am?

In hopes of reclaiming my female readership...

This is so cute, you'll wanna puke.

Since I don't care about that other tournament anymore...

Anyone keeping up with The Washington Post's First Annual Beer Madness Tournament? 32 American brews went at it, and now it's down to the Final Four. I was a bit tickled that PBR was the only contender that came in a can.

Alas, Shiner Bock didn't make it out of the Sweet Sixteen. Right now, my money is on Ellie's Brown Ale. I've never had a chance to taste it, but you can't go wrong with a dog on your label.

Did you vote?

Well, I cast my vote yesterday. I was proud to say that I was in the first 6000 people to vote for the Star Wars stamp that the USPS is putting out in late May. I went with Luke standing there with the two suns in the background. It was a tough decision. Darth Maul has easily replaced the cool bad-ass mystique that Boba Fett once carried. Leia giving R2 the plans to the death star is a classic, and how could Yoda or Vader not make it. Well, I think it goes to Luke because I seem to connect with this scene especially being from where I am. There is beauty in where he is from, but there seems to be great adventure elsewhere. I find it a moment of great introspection that I have had on many occasions. So Luke gets my bid.

The things European advertisers get away with...

This seemingly innocent ad for a French personal lubricant I've seen on a few blogs out there is quite clever. It took me awhile to get it.

And this is why I insist on keeping my relative anonymity on this blog...

Who knew this blog would be such a hot bed for people Googling for naughty bits? And to think the most pornographic thing I've ever posted was a picture of a couple of pandas getting it on.

I hope they didn't invoke the "you break it, you buy it" rule...

Sorry. I seem to be on a sports car/YouTube kick today.

Eddie Griffin, a comedian known for such classic films as Undercover Brother and Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigalo totaled a Ferrari Enzo while practicing for a charity race to promote his new film Redline, sort of a knockoff of The Fast and the Furious, but with much more exotic cars. As only 400 of these Ferraris were ever produced, they're as rare as the R2-D2 mailboxes we're all hunting around for, and are worth $1.5 million a piece.

Commenting about his recent crash: "Undercover Brother's good at karate and all the rest of that, but the brother can't drive."

Here's a video of the whole event. I'd understand if the owner stayed home in bed today to mourn the loss of his prized possession. That looked like it hurt:



Then again, it doesn't look quite as bad as this wreck last year in Malibu:



Just goes to show you that those disclaimers on TV about using professional drivers aren't as much hogwash as you think. That, or there's some other Enzo owners out there trying to boost up the worth of their own cars.

Living vicariously through those braver than me (or dumber than me, depending on your perspective)...

Yeah, forget what I posted about the Bugatti and crapping in my pants. That's nothing compared to what it would be like to try and follow these guys around:



And just to compete my theme of recklessness, this is a classic short film C'etait un rendez-vous by French film maker Claude LeLouch adapted for a Snow Patrol video. I've also included the original film, if you'd rather hear the nice roar of an automobile engine shifting through the gears as he frantically races through the streets of Paris. Pretty crazy stuff, but pretty cool, too:

And the sports car that I'll be getting to make up for my shortcomings...

I think I've written about the Bugatti Veyron before, the fastest street legal production car in the world that tops out at a mind-boggling 253 mph. As this video points out, this automobile needs 10 radiators just to handle the massive heat production involved to produce enough horsepower to achieve such speeds. I think if I got the chance to drive this thing, I'd have crapped in my pants.

Fighting polar bears? I'm in...

Curious if anyone has read Philip Pullman's "His Dark Materials" trilogy. The first book of this series, The Golden Compass, is being adapted to film, and looks quite cool. Something anyone out there recommends reading before the movies come out?






The Golden Compass Pre-Trailer on Vimeo

What goes on in Alberta?

As you all know, I have a SiteMeter box at the bottom of the sidebar of this blog. This publicizes not only how many visits have been made to our humble blog (4823--can you believe it?), but also can tell me where people have been visiting from. Sometimes, I can even figure out how they got to this blog, which can be a bit amusing at times.

I'm still wondering why anyone would do a Google search on "cheetah anatomical penis," but I'm glad The Life and Times of Chester Cheetah and the Kool-Aid Gang can be a reference for such a query. I actually Googled the search phrase myself--Kool-Aid Gang is the second result you get.

Beaning kids in the head with footballs--I really shouldn't laugh...

I didn't catch SNL this weekend, but this short with Peyton Manning was pretty funny. It's on the NBC site, too, if this YouTube version gets pulled down soon.

Just when it starts getting good again...

Alright. I was tempted, but no semi-naked pics for my Battlestar Galactica post today (sorry Firecracker George). Instead, I found this one of Starbuck and Starbuck enjoying drinks at Starbucks on some random blog from my Google search. I'm actually hoping for a good Dirk Benedict cameo on the show at some point before it ends. What does that guy do for work these days anyway?

Anywho, the season finale of Battlestar Galactica played out just as the spoilers revealed. Even though I cheated and knew what was going to happen, I think last night's episode was awesome. Not having any new episodes for ten months, though, will be painful, especially with the direction they went with the end of this season.

I know Wander mentioned once early on in the beginning of the series that he had his own theory about the overall direction of the storyline. Is this shaping up like you thought?

Don't know if everyone has seen last night's episode yet, so instead of revealing a bunch of spoilers as I share my thoughts, I'll revert to invisotext mode:

• Anyone else think the revelation that Tigh, Tyrol, Anders, and Tory were sleeper Cylons was a bit of misdirection? Seems a bit farfetched to me that six models (if you include Sharon) would have ended up on the Galactica, considering it was scheduled to be decommissioned when the series started. What would the Cylons have had to gain by placing them there? My bet is there will be a bigger revelation regarding the Final Five next season, and that these four aren't Cylons at all. Perhaps Laura Roselyn is one of them, although how could that be if she's got cancer? And why didn't any of them come up positive with Baltar's Cylon test back in Season One?
• I feel a bit embarrassed that I've always thought of "All Along the Watchtower" as a Jimi Hendrix song, when in fact, Bob Dylan wrote it and sang it first.
  
• I wasn't really getting into the whole trial of Baltar storyline, but I thought they wrapped it up well last night.
• For some reason, the ending where all the pilots are scrambling to get to their Vipers, and Lee ends up grabbing his gear to jump into the fight with them seemed like something out of Robotech or some other similar anime series, which for me, is a good thing. The more I think about it, Battlestar Galactica is almost like a more grown-up, live action version of Robotech. No wonder I like it so much.
  
• Starbuck's still alive? I guess we'll see next season. Maybe she's become embedded in Lee's mind like Six is for Baltar. Now that would be an interesting twist. Another example of good misdirection, though. Ronald D. Moore's podcast went on and on about how the cast was sad and almost in mourning when they filmed the episdoe where they had to "kill off" Starbuck, and even the internet was abuzz with reports of Katee Sackhoff being kind of pissed off that she was supposedly written off the show. Guess this was all planned, knowing that most BSG watchers are total nerds with no lives that spend way too much time on forums and blogs. Hmmm...sounds familiar.
  
• The end where they zoom out to Earth gives me the impression that the writers are going to get focused next season, and move this journey along. Perhaps next season will wrap it all up? That would be a great finish. I'm not sure it can quite last for a full five seasons.
  

If you didn't have a complex yet...

Above is the picture of a 60 ton sperm whale that literally exploded in the middle of a Taiwan city as its decomposing corpse was being transported to a research lab for autopsy. That in and of itself is pretty gross. However, the reason this beached whale had garnered so much attention was not so much for its overall size, but the size of a certain part of his anatomy:

Once moved to a nearby nature preserve, the male specimen -- the largest whale ever recorded in Taiwan -- drew the attention of locals because of its large penis, measured at some five feet, the Taipei Times reported.

I think I'll go buy that sports car now.

R2-D2 sighting #3--only 397 left to go...

Thanks to Firecracker George and his eagle-sharp eyesight, another R2-D2 mailbox was sighted in Houston nearby the Galleria. As luck would have it, I was also in town that day for us to snap picture of the find.

No sightings in Colorado? North Carolina? Arizona? None in the D.C. area perhaps? C'mon, dudes. I can't go to every state in the Union. I need some help. ;-)

Why I Love Jon Stewart

This clip from Wednesday's Daily Show summed up better then anything else I've seen on there why I love the show, and most especially Jon Stewart. Not that sticking it to John Bolton is especially hard, but Jon did it without even making a moustache joke. Now that's talent!

Considering how homo-erotic Masters of the Universe was, this isn't too much of a stretch.

Your daily dose of pop culture portmanteau.

Another R2-D2 sighting...

So I was in Chicago this weekend, and ran into yet another one of these mailboxes, this time on the "Magnificent Mile" of Michigan Avenue. Needless to say, I felt like kind of a dork stopping to take a couple of pictures of this mailbox as the well-heeled shoppers passed me by. My wife sort of walked a few feet ahead of me, pretending she didn't know who I was for a brief minute.

I think I read there is supposed to be 400 of these things. Well, two down, 398 to go. If any of you happen to see one in your neck of the woods, let me know--I'm kind of curious.

Just don't vomit on the keyboard, please...

This series of essays from Esquire magazine written by a writer at various stages of drunkenness seemed timely given inebriated Firecracker George and his alcohol-induced post from this weekend.

A truly satisfactory answer demands equal measures of hard science and hard liquor. My editor and I devised a protocol in which he would supply me with a series of essay topics. The first would come while I was sober, with others to follow at ninety-minute intervals as I began to sip steadily from a bottle of Johnnie Walker. Self-administered breath tests would track my progress and verify--if the text somehow didn't--that the whisky was having an effect. As it turned out . . . well, you'll see.

Maybe we should all do this experiment one of these days on this blog. I feel somewhat uninhibited to write what I think, and that's when I'm sober. I can't imagine what a few rounds of bourbon would do to my posts.

Apparently Alcohol Doesn't Dull The Pain of Schism

When we are babies, we don't notice our separation from the rest of the
world. We are the world, and the world is us. As we get a little older,
we notice our separation from our parents. And then we notice our
single gender; it is then that the pain begins.

Evolution is a process of adding layers. Humans are not animals alien to this world,
we are simply the latest layer of life on earth. We contain within us
all subsequent layers. Our self-relativistic ego, which thinks it is in
charge, is simply making decisions based on supplicating the demands of
our lower layers. It thinks it is the master because it makes the
decisions. But in reality, it makes these choices only to placate the
baser urges. In reality it is the dutiful slave.

One of these most famous urges is the one Freud and every advertiser in all of human
history loves to exploit: sex. But in the layered human being, sex is
mostly a lowest layer yearning, a simplest understanding, of the desire
to once again be whole like we were when we were babies; like we were
before we recognized that we are alone, cast out of the bliss of Eden.

I thought maybe getting tanked tonight would salve my isolation, but it has only made it more acute.

You know guys, when I said "I do" five years ago, I meant it. Not "I do for
a little while." Not "I will for three years." But I didn't marry one
person, I married two. I married the woman I loved, and against my
wishes I married a woman damaged and angry, who craved but feared the reunion
of man and woman. A woman who made sure I never got too close for too
long, and would hurt me just to keep me at a safe distance. It wasn't
her infidelity that made me finally decide to break my promise, it was
the realization that I would spend my life never getting back to the
wholeness I knew before I could form a cogent thought.

I know that I have three dates with three girls this weekend, but in all
honestly I was only interested in one. I thought that she was
interested in me. After our first date, she asked me out for a second a
few hours later. Only I found out last night that those weren't dates,
and neither was the dinner we just ate. In fact, she just is too busy
to date anyone right now.

But I know that she feels the schism too. She feels it and fears it; fears being let down again, just like her father let her down. And if I knew that she wasn't interested in me, I could let it go. But since she contacted me every day this week
before our date; since she shared her insecurities with me, I can't let it go. And at the same time, I won't bug her. I've told her how I felt, and now I'm giving her her space.

And none of this helps me on a Saturday night. And neither did the alcohol.

So here I sit, tanked out of my gourd. I walked twice as far as I needed to from the party to my house because I was tacking back and forth. And now here I sit, hoping to feel my separateness just a little less by babbling to all of you. My loneliness hangs from my heart like a heavy plumb, and the best I have is a blog.

I meet so many girls. I meet so many girls I can make giggle, smile, flip their hair. But when it comes to getting the ones I want to give us a shot, I feel like a three-legged cat trying to bury turds on a frozen pond.

I just want to feel whole again, like I did when I was an infant. When I was the world, and the world was me. Like I did for a brief time with Traci. But now thankfully, I think I feel the temporary bliss of passing out coming on.