The Todd Blog

World of World of Warcraft

2008-07-18T21:35:00.003-05:00

I didn't mean to jump in right in front of Jeff's post, but this is just too good. Please scroll down and read about they Wonder/Travesty that is Volo, IL. And by please scroll down I mean after you watch this (make sure you watch to the end, there are two clips):

'Warcraft' Sequel Lets Gamers Play A Character Playing 'Warcraft'

No Viva La Volo

2008-07-17T16:19:00.012-05:00

Hey Everybody, as Todd mentioned previously, there is a new contributor on board. As you may have guessed, that contributor is me. My name is Jeff. I'm a sophomore at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and am currently studying History. The Toddster and I go back and have quite a few stories together. We also played in the critically-acclaimed high school band, Scrumtrilescent. But enough of me. The time has come. Ladies and gentlemen, I now present you with, The Volo Auto Museum: A tale of anticipation, David Hasslehoff, and comical amounts of blood.
One Saturday afternoon, Todd, Ken, and I ventured to the North West suburb of Volo, Illinois. Ken, Todd's friend from Japan, was staying with Todd for a few weeks so we planned various tourist activities to give Ken a memorable experience of America. With Google Maps on our side, we were unstoppable.
The madness started before we even arrived at the auto museum. As we traveled northbound on Rand Rd, we encountered a n odd little intersection. We couldn't believe it when we passed by Rand and Old Rand Rd. At first, our reactions were, "huh, that's interesting, I guess they just got lazy with the road names but no big deal. " But then, things started to get crazy. Every few minutes, we traveled by yet another intersection of Rand and Old Rand Rd. In fact, during the trip, there was a total of five of the exact same intersections. On the Google map, all of the five yellow flags are separate intersections of Rand and Old Rand Rd. Our evidence leads us to this conclusion: Volo, IL contains some sort of black hole and Old Rand Rd. is a dark and mysterious apex of the universe.
We arrived at the auto museum confused and slightly shaken up but we managed. Ken, a huge fan of classic American muscle cars, was ready to begin sight-seeing. Not only does Volo contain hundreds of American roadsters, the museum has a section dedicated to Hollywood cars as well. We're talkin' about all the cars from tv and movies that everyone recognizes. We were graced by the presence of the Batcar, the Delorean (Back to the Future) and of course, the original KITT from Hasslehoff's 80's action-series Nightrider. But the fun doesn't stop here at the Volo Auto Museum!
Unfortunately, Volo also has a Military Adventure Museum. It's not as fun as it sounds. For example, the "Adventure" aspect is more of a haunted house. But instead of cheesy scare tactics and surprise monsters, you walk through a faux-warzone with tanks, soldiers, and annoyingly loud gunfire constantly ringing. Yep. Volo's got "Military Adventure" written all over it. And what could be better for the kids than walking by an exhibit depicting a medical unit in Vietnam? Better yet, the kids get to see a soldier with missing legs and another one with severe burns. In addition, education comes as an "unnoticed bonus" in the Combat Zone. Almost as bad as the Combat Zone was the artifacts museum. Not only do they collect cars in Volo, Il, but they also collect racist government propaganda from World War II! I knew we had to leave when we passed by the section with multiple anti-Japanese news clippings with racist depictions. There's nothing like visiting a country only to find out just how much their leaders used to hate your kind in the past. Poor ken...
After the Military Adventure Museum, we quickly made our way to the grossly overpriced gift-shop, the Mercantile Mall. Here, you could buy all the crappy antiques that flooded your grandparent's home, except for much more than they're worth. As we've learned from Volo before, there's always something for the kids. Inside the Mercantile Mall, there's a small videogame shop. Here, you can purchase an array of old games for ridiculously inflated prices. Old original GameBoy games for $25. For some reason, we all just knew it was time to cut our losses at the Volo Auto Museum.
On the way out on good 'ol Rand Rd, we spotted a mini-golf course. It looked fun, so we gave it a shot. Turns out, the course was sub-par (alright, that's the end of the puns, I swear). For all 18 holes, there was a simple way that each of them were built: lay some fake grass over cement, randomly place a stone on the grass, cut out a section of the grass (instead of sand-traps, there were cement-traps!) and finally, line the hole with bricks. Somehow, I managed to stub my toe on one of the bricks that lined the hole and I started bleeding all over the course. But all in all, it was still a successful trip to Volo, Il. Ken got to see his cars and Todd posed with KITT. Volo, Il is an interesting little place that seems to be stuck in the past and for the most part, I think I'll leave it there.

-Jeff

A New Era

2008-07-08T12:26:00.003-05:00

Alright you guys, I've been doing a ton of writing lately for the paper, my Japanese blog, and now my new job as a writer for a poker website. Because of all this, the old Todd blog has been getting a bit of the shaft lately.

Well it's time for things to change. It's time for a new era.

It's time for.... (duh, duh, DUH!) ... a new contributor.

That's right, it's not just my show any more. But that doesn't mean the old blog's gonna go down the chutes. No, no. I haven't even told you who it's gonna be yet. That's right, it's my boy Jeff.

Jeff has been my co-conspirator in many a ridiculous adventure, such as The Backpack Party which you may remember from New Year's, or the pillar of glory that is Heidkamping. He also took part in a ridiculous adventure we had on Saturday, but I'll let him tell you about that himself.

A new era is rising.

Todd Hits the Presses

2008-06-26T12:50:00.002-05:00

Yes! Validation! My first ever printed thing in a newspaper came out today, a review of Kung Fu Panda. This summer I'm working two days a week for a newspaper in the south suburbs of Chicago. I do lots of odds and ends including fact checking, copy editing, reporting, and now writing movie reviews. It's pretty sweet. Anyway, here's my review of Kung Fu Panda:

You'll get a kick out of 'Kung Fu Panda'

If you find yourself waiting in line for a sold-out showing of the new Pixar film, Wall-E, check out another family-friendly, computer-generated flick.

"Kung Fu Panda" tells the story of Po (Jack Black), a portly, noodle-serving panda who is accidentally chosen to be "Dragon Warrior," the kung fu guardian of his homeland.

Critics have knocked the film for having a predictable plot, and this is far from the first DreamWorks picture with a zoological rainbow of celebrity-voiced characters. Yet, the time-honored "inadequate hero rises to the challenge through hard work" template is perfectly executed with an inspirational moral attached, and really works as a backdrop for the film's nonstop laughs.

While kids crack-up at Po's Homer Simpson-esque, slapstick suffering, the satire of kung fu films will delight any martial arts buff. Like the "sword of heroes," which is so sharp you can cut yourself just by looking at it, the film's razor wit will put teens and adults in fits.

Black's enthusiasm in conveying Po sounds completely natural for a giddy panda. So do Po's kung fu idols: "The Furious Five," are voiced by Angelina Jolie, David Cross, Seth Rogan, Lucy Liu and Jackie Chan, but the minimal lines and character development given to these stars makes you wish for a three-hour film.

The best thing I can say about "Kung Fu Panda" is that there's never a dull moment. You're either laughing at the gags or gaping at the gorgeous fight scenes -- and frequently both. With kids or with friends, it's hard not to get a kick out of this film.

- Todd ####### (last name withheld for copyright reasons. Just kidding. I just don't like stalkers)

So who's cool now, oh yeah, that's right, it's me. Always.

Learn Japanese Blog

2008-06-23T07:04:00.007-05:00

Okay. So i've started a new blog as a side project. Now, I know what you're thinking, "how can you want to do another blog even though you never update this one?" The answer is that I'm going to stop being lazy. I'll update this one more. I hope.

But anyway, the new blog. It's going to be most focused on the learning Japanese kind of posts on this blog, and it's also going to be a review site for Japanese learning materials. I'm going to try to consolidate the resources of the internet in a sort of functional way. Also, because I get paid by the post, I'm going to try to post on this new one every day. So if you are a student of Japanese and/or you have enjoyed my posts on the topic, check out the new blog:

www.learnjapanese.today.com

Other loyal readers, fear not. More updates will soon follow.

Man With a Tail

2008-06-13T17:06:00.001-05:00

I love Japan.

Slamball

2008-05-25T14:31:00.003-05:00

A fantastic combination of football, professional wrestling, and the all-star weekend slam dunk competition, SLAMBALL gives you everything you could possibly want from a sport. And by everything I mean trampoline dunks and the best goaltending money can buy.

This video will show you the ropes. Pay attention to the rules, and remember SLAMS are worth 3 points, everything else is worth 2.

Here's the slamball dunk competition:

More great slamball action:

A video of some kids playing playing slamball with terrible results. This video is definitely a minute too long.

Try this at home.

LARPing

2008-05-08T14:25:00.004-05:00

For those of you unfamiliar with this concept, LARPing stands for Live-Action Role Playing, it's where you dress up like Dungeons & Dragons characters and fight with cardboard swords and axes, all the while throwing spells, represented in a number of hilarious ways. I don't quite understand why live-action roleplayers would allow themselves to be filmed, but luckily for us they have.

The following video came to my attention because it is the basis of a Carleton GOP cheer. The way the cheer works is that everyone starts by quietly saying "lightning bolt," and then it gradually builds up to everyone screaming "DEATH! DEATH! DEATH! DEATH!" You'll see why:

And now the same battle scene, except seen through the eyes of a true LARPer:

This next video is just hilarious. Magic Missile is a level-1 D&D spell, or so I hear:

Bald Spot at midnight. Bring fake beards and chainmail.

Avatar and Trash Baby

2008-04-29T22:00:00.003-05:00

Ok. Sorry I haven't posted in a while, but I really liked having Adventure Time up there. Ha. Anyways, I want to give a shoutout to Jim K, for being the first person to e-mail me for Air Alert 3, or really anything for that matter. Yeah, don't hesitate to e-mail me if you want Air Alert, or if you have any questions or comments about posts. I'll try to get back to you within 1-2 business days.

Anyways, for those of you that haven't yet seen every episode of Avatar: The Last Airbender, the fuck are you waiting for. Avatar is a cartoon on Nickelodeon that has a ridiculously strong following among college students and adults. The reason for this is pretty clear because the writing is fantastic, it's definitely the funniest politically correct show I've ever seen, possibly the funniest period. The humor is very silly and the characters are really well drawn. The plot centers around a Asian-themed world with four nations based on the four elements: fire, earth, water, and air. The fire nation is trying to take over the world, and the only person who can stop them is the Avatar, who can master all four elements. Sounds kinda stupid. It isn't. It's awesome. Torrent it here.

Also, if Avatar is a little too racy for you, try watching the latest installment of Trash Baby for some good, clean fun.

Adventure Time

2008-04-16T14:41:00.003-05:00

I give you Adventure Time, the best thing to come out of Nickelodeon since Avatar. I don't need to tell you why it's funny, but look at the only two items in the Ice King's tower once you get there.

Out. Of. Control.

Doo Dah Doo Doo

2008-04-12T20:32:00.002-05:00

First of all, sorry it's taken a while to post. My bad. I've been busy. To show you how sincere I am in my apology, I give you one of my favorite youtube videos. It's from the Tim and Eric show, and it's hilarious. Just remember to think about your dad.

More to come.

Sock Man

2008-03-26T20:45:00.006-05:00

This is a story by Gordy, my little brother.

Sock man

Chapter 1 stinky socks:

Once upon a time there was a boy with stinky socks. Somehow he could control to do what ever he what it with the stinky socks like whip people. and make the socks talk.

I Hate You Sarah Marshall

2008-03-25T00:46:00.003-05:00

First of all, sorry about the hiatus. I was away for Spring Break in sunny Folly Beach, South Carolina for a fun-filled week of frisbee, beer, and sunstroke. But i'll write about that in more detail in another article.

The theme for this post came from when I was driving around Chicago tonight and saw some interesting billboards:

Also on the billboard, but not as obvious as the smack-talk, is the URL www.ihatesarahmarshall.com. My interest piqued, I checked out the site as soon as I got home. Apparently it is the brainchild of Peter Bretter, a TV composer who was recently dumped by, you guessed, Sarah Marshall, the attractive star of Crime Scene. The posts go from him being hilariously spinelessly in love with her at the earlier blog posts and hating her towards the end. He used the money he made from selling her engagement ring (which he never got to use) to make these hate billboards.

Or so you would think. Really the site and the billboards are a really well done teaser for the upcoming movie from the director and producer of 40-Year Old Virgin and Knocked Up, called Forgetting Sarah Marshall. No, there is no real Peter Bretter and no real billboard war. Its just brilliant advertising. Looks like its gonna be a pretty good movie, and exceedingly well hyped.

Under the Table and The Red Menace

2008-03-10T13:20:00.010-05:00

So. This is the story of my roommate. When I came back to my room he was already about 3 beers in, which was half way to his 6-drink capacity. He was playing some beirut, taking shots, falling down, and fighting somewhere in the meantime, all of this taking well above his maximum. Then he found the fan.

First he just humped it for a while, then he decided it was a better pillow.

Shortly after that the absolute chaos began, and I escaped as my hapless drunk roommate was wildly flailing to escape a headlock in the hallway. When I returned about an hour later with my other roommate, (i live in a triple), we came across this hilarious image.

What you can't see in this picture are the crumpled up beer cans he's sleeping on and that his hair is dripping wet from all the beer poured on it. Somehow he made it on to his top bunk in the middle of the night, but that's still kind of a mystery.

Also, here's a picture of me that has been dubbed "The Red Menace."

Now there were a couple of circumstances leading to the pigment perfectly captured in this photo:

1. Alcohol

2. Face cream that closes my pores

3. Two long-sleeve button-down shirts being worn at the same time.

4. Crowded room

Anyways, hilarious.

Abdominal

2008-03-03T13:46:00.005-06:00

So if you like either hip-hop, Canadians, or Judaism, you'll probably like Abdominal, who is, surprisingly enough, a Canadian Jewish rapper. He has a ridiculous vocabulary and spits mad rhymes while rarely taking breaks. His repeated partnerships with the fantastic DJ Format ensure that he always has a sick beat to bust his tech to. Enjoy these videos:

Abdominal Workout

Vicious Battle Raps: DJ Format Feat. Abdominal

And my personal favorite, 3 Feet Deep: DJ Format Feat. Abdominal and MC D-Cisive. This is one of my favorite music videos ever.

If you've been converted, you can buy his album here

Beirut Champions

2008-02-25T13:52:00.004-06:00

And to the victors go the spoils.

We were undefeated. 6-0. There were 16 teams total, broken up into 4 pools of 4. We ended up playing the second place team from our pool in the finals, but they were fairly drunk by then and our endurance brought us the win. Fuck yeah.

Beirut Pump-Up Explosion

2008-02-22T15:05:00.004-06:00

So after a week of training, my roommate and I are finally ready to participate in our dorm beirut (beer pong) tournament tonight. In honor of this occasion, I decided to collect some beirut pump-up videos.

First, 9000 cup beirut:

Then it's time for some ridiculous beirut shots, i know this is a super popular video, but there are still people that need to see it.

Wish us luck.

Dave Koz, Best Sax Player Ever, or DOUBLE Best Sax Player Ever

2008-02-19T17:23:00.002-06:00

Now as you watch this, it is important to realize one crucial thing, Dave Koz is a huge tool. You can just imagine middle-aged women creaming their jeans to this. That's when it gets really funny.

Here are some things to look for:

- Tiny phallic saxophone
- Unnecessary dancing
- Facial expressions that go along with the music, meant to imply "soul"
- Roundhouse kicks to emphasize certain notes
- The bass player who is stoned out of his gourd
- Dave Koz sneaking up behind the bass player and playing behind his leg
- Dave challenges the bass player to a "battle," but never actually lets him play and instead invades his personal space.
- Obscenely long high note with equally preposterous angle of both back and saxophone

Spread the word, people. Dave Koz 08.

Vegas

2008-02-12T15:26:00.001-06:00

I know, I know. Mardi Gras, then Vegas. I know. Trust me, I'm completely viced out. It's refreshing to have it be actually dark out at night. But I'm getting ahead of myself...Vegas.

So my frisbee team, the ever-debaucherous Carleton Gods of Plastic (GOP), flew out of Minneapolis airport last Thursday night towards sunny Las Vegas for the annual Trouble in Vegas frisbee tournament. You know you're in Vegas when the second you step off the plane you can see over 20 slot machines glittering neatly outside your gate. Speaking as a first-time visitor, I think a pretty good characterization of Vegas is that every part of the city is trying to have sex with every orifice on your body at all times. We waited by the baggage claim tossing discs around as our eyes and ears were assault by the whirring of slot machines, neon lights, and sensationalized advertisements trying to draw customers to see Tony Danza gawk his way through The Producers or "Comedian of the Year" Carrot Top. Welcome to Vegas.

So we got to our hotel which was The Plaza, a landmark of the old strip with the Las Vegas Club and Binion's and the like. We got in around 2 AM and we were hungry as shit, so we forayed into the seedy underbelly of Thursday night Vegas and ended up at the restaurant in the basement of Binion's for a $4 breakfast special that was only served from midnight to 7 AM. We were a huge group, so our order took an understandably long time. Then our proprieters made the mistake of having the first thing they served 15 ravenous college students be not pancakes, not eggs, but about 50 tubs of freshly whipped butter.

It gets better. We play this game on tournament weekends called Ultimate Loser. The Ultimate Loser has to do whatever stupid shit a returning member of the team tells them to or they can challenge someone to a Beer Shotgunning contest of which the loser is the new Ultimate Loser. So I've never been Ultimate Loser, but this night the Ultimate Loser had already gone to bed, so I stood up to the team's sadistic appetites.

Within a minute I was dizzy from the force it took to suck butter through a straw. Butter didn't actually reach my mouth for a good 5 minutes, but by that time I was already feeling light-headed, and when the butter finally reached my mouth and my saliva started to taste like Denny's I nearly dry-heaved. Seeing my difficulty, the night manager of the place disappeared momentarily and returned with a shotglass of melted butter. I couldn't refuse his kindness. I had to throw back the butter shot. Through the straw was worse, I thought. Afterwards we headed back to our 3 hotel rooms for all 23 of us. Yep, rookies sleep on the floor.

We woke up the next day for some exciting W pool frisbee play. No joke, ABCDEF...W pool. We were ranked 75th of 80 teams when some teams we beat at Mardi Gras were in the 20's and 30's. So it goes. So we played our three games against Shippensberg, UCSB-B, and BYU-Idaho campus. I know. What a lineup. We defeated the first two teams pretty handily, but actually had some trouble with BYU Idaho, who would throw garbage throws and hucks and continually make amazing catches to score. Then we tightened up the D and shut them down in the second half.

Then it was time to heckle the CUT- Hodags game. CUT is the other team at Carleton. They're better than us, but we're not their B-team because we have some players that could be on CUT. They play to win Nationals, we like to drink and not be as serious. So we have something of a playful rivalry. So CUT and the Madison Hodags were two of the best teams at the tournament and tensions were high at the game. Then we landsharked. See the Mardi Gras article for an explanation of landsharking if you don't know, but just imagine a 5'3" naked leprechaun (The Ultimate Loser) zooming across an intense sports match with a frisbee in his ass carried by four goofballs in hawaiian shirts. I had his left leg.

The highlight of Friday night was the ridiculous Buffet at the Rio. It costs $23 and you have to wait in line for half an hour, but it's all kickass from there. The theme is foods of the world, so right of the bat I ate 30 pieces of sushi 10 crab legs. Having earned back my $23, i proceeded to binge on tacos, pizza, vietnamese pho, cajun shrimp, mac & cheese, rice, key lime pie, and gelato. With full bellies we cruised around the strip, lost money at the Bellagio, saw the fountains, and went back to the hotel.

Saturday was another wake up and play frisbee day. I'm not sure if there is such thing as a food hangover, but I had one. Our first game was against APU, a decent team, but one that we let score too many points. They took it to universe point when we got a Callahan (defensive catch in the other team's endzone) for the win. We took all the momentum from that game and squandered it away into a mediocre loss to the University of Vermont, a better team, but still well within our capacity of defeat. After a three-hour break we played Montana State and lost a close game and then trampled the University of Miami. Record so far: 5-2.

This brings me to Saturday night. February 9th. The 40th day of the year. 40 day. Fast forward to all of us drinking 40s of Colt 45 while three motorcyclists rode around in hectic zig-zags and loops inside a metal sphere. Only in Vegas. Also in the theme of 40 day, my buddy that looks like a leprechaun...we'll call him Leprechaun from now on, anyway Leprechaun was still the Ultimate Loser so he had to take his picture with some Chippendales dancers for the low low price of $40. I hope those pictures make it on the internet somehow.

Anyways, from there we hopped on a bus to the strip because no one wanted to DD. As is the tendency for long drunken bus rides, some crazy shit happened. One of my team mates, Dance Machine (you should see him), offered to sleep with a prostitute if we paid for it, and so began a night of bargain shopping that would ultimately yield no result...yet. The long bus ride also ended with an anxious peeing in an empty 40 bottle because he couldn't hold it any longer.

So let me tell you about the Trouble in Vegas tournament party. It was one of the most ridiculous and simultaneously well run parties I've ever experienced. It was a moving party to avoid the cops, with the stops at abandoned lots near major casinos, i.e. The lot a block east of the Luxor, or the abandoned field behind the Tropicana. It was ridiculous. Hundreds, maybe even thousands of people were roaming around from lot to lot as guys with huge coolers dispensed punch and U-hauls full of booze drove around bestowing bottles of champagne on members of the crowd. I've really never experienced a party of such critical mass. There were cops and casino security, but they just couldn't stop us. We were too many people. I remember guzzling a mix of punch and champagne, then carrying one of my landsharking teammates, and my favorite memory, drunkenly talking in near-perfect Japanese to this cute japanese girl i met at the party for over an hour. This is the part of the night where my memory gets patchy, but i remember being in a taxi and someone handing my a Mcdonalds bag to boot in, which I did. Except, ha ha, jokes on me, there was a hole in the bottom, completely owning my favorite pair of jeans. As soon as we got to the hotel I wiped the vomit off my lap, threw $5 at the driver and escaped into the elevator before anyone was the wiser.

Then I woke up. Early. And we played and won our last two games against Shippensberg (again) and Virginia Tech. I strained my quad at some point during these games, so I guess I'll have to stay off it for a while. Then we headed over to watch the CUT Hodags rematch in the semifinals. We drank some brews and did some hilarious drunken heckling, such as counting the number of calls (40 in the first half). I believe the final score was 12-10 Madison, but they won on the cap. CUT actually scored the last point, and they had some momentum, but time ran out. Unfortunate.

That was the end of Trouble in Vegas for me and the GOP. We finished in 57th place out of 80, which is kind of bogus for a record of 7-2, but oh well. The tournament was really well run and the party was tight. Nice job Five Ultimate. We headed back to the slot-infested airport and I had a delicious Cinnabon before taking the plane home, arguably my favorite part of the weekend. I got back to Carleton at 8:45 AM, one hour before my first class and with no homework done. Thanks Vegas.

Mardi Gras

2008-02-06T13:29:00.001-06:00

So I've been getting some flak for not updating for a while. Let me tell you why that is. I went to Mardi Gras this past weekend. Yeah, the real one. After a 22-hour drive from Minnesota, my frisbee team, GOP (Gods of Plastic), had one of the best practices we've ever had on some typically Louisianian, puddle-ridden fields. The practice was made much better by obscene amounts of laying out, a bottle of everclear, and two cases of beer. We practice in style.

So after practice the returners held up the bottle of Everclear and told us that we had to finish it over the course of the rest of the weekend. They thought we would buy mixers. We didn't. We passed the bottle around and took monster pulls of everclear, taking down about half the bottle on that Friday night, just before heading to Bourbon Street, New Orleans.

Let me just say this right now. Mardi Gras is ridiculous. It's like Memorial Day gone horribly wrong. First of all, everyone is drunk. Then there's a parade, but instead of throwing out candy, they throw out beads. And you want beads. Beads are the currency of Mardi Gras. You can earn them by skying bitches (jumping up and catching them) or dancing or showing parts of your body or drinking heavily or any combination of the above. So anyway. GOP fell on Mardi Gras and it didn't stand a chance. Over the course of the evening, myself or my teammates did all of the following:

-Saw Hulk Hogan
- Showed Penis for beads
- Was nearly Bro-Raped
- Drank around 20 40s
-Saw vajayjay
- Showed penis again for more beads (same guy)
- Debated with born-again Christians
-Climbed a greased pole in pursuit of an asshole on a balcony
-Showed titties
-Saw titties

We woke up the next morning hungover, but ready to play, which was after all the whole reason we were there. We went undefeated in our pool, beating Grinnell, Kansas B, Texas A&M, and Tulane. A&M was a really tough match, but we fired up and our defense shut them down towards the end. I'd also like to give a shout-out to the blitz-drunk little asian guy on Tulane, who would have a little rum & coke on the sidelind between every point of every game the whole day, then proceed to run around non-stop, not particularly trying to get the disc or get open, just running. That's what we like to see.

Our 4 wins gave us an opportunity to play for the win, and maybe play the Wisconsin Hodags, but we lost to Wisconsin Whitewater in a close game, putting us in the losers bracket. That ended play on Saturday, and we left to replenish ourselves at Izzo's illegal burritos. What's an illegal burrito you ask? Well I can't find a good picture, so just imagine two and a quarter Chipotle burritos stacked end to end and with more options of filling. They're ridiculous, and all of us rookies were forced to order one. I decided to shoot for the record of finishing in 8 minutes 40 seconds, but only managed 10 minutes, and by only i mean I ate a billion gallons of food in ten minutes without throwing up. Which reminds me, somehow the Izzo's experience devolved into two of my teammates shotgunning beers in the parking lot and one of them throwing up half a pound of Mexican goodness.

Anyways, I had a 16" burrito in my stomach and it was time for the tournament party. I wanted to get drunk so my only choice was clear. Ever-clear. The only substance on Earth that can work through an Izzo's burrito. But back to the party. GOP has this thing about winning parties. We show up, we get drunk, and we do some sort of hilarious shenanigans that entitle us to declare victory on the event. Things were not going well at first as the burritos inhibited our drunkenness and we lost a boat (beer chugging) race to Okalahoma State. Finally one of us got drunk enough to landshark, and if there's one thing that wins a party, it's a land shark. A landshark is when you get naked and are carried around horizontally with a frisbee clenched between your buttcheeks (thus the shark). What made it better was that a bunch of girl frisbee players volunteered to carry my drunken naked teammate all throughout the party to cries of "Hell yeah!" "Oh my God!" and "I just saw my first penis!" When the dust had settled, the party was won, and our hapless landsharker made-out with a girl who had earlier claimed she would kiss anyone that would do a landshark. After winning the party it was time to go home and rest, but I felt I hadn't done enough stupid stuff yet, so I got naked and jumped in the frigid outdoor pool.

The next morning sucked. All of our muscles were unbelievably sore and we let our mediocre opponents get out to an early lead. But then through the miracle of ibuprofin and our half time cheer of "We're Not That Drunk!" we came back for the easy win. Next was our rivals, Duluth. Our games with them are always close and they always have bad spirit and are obnoxious about the rules, so they can be a real pain in the ass.

So we started playing, sure that our weary limbs weren't up for it as they got out to an early lead, but then we decided we weren't gonna take it and battled all the way to universe point, 14-14. We got a sweet layout D on the goal line and then one of our players called a time-out. We were in hard-cap, so a time-out is techinically a turnover, but any team with good spirit would give it back. Not Dultuth. They snatched up the disc and threw in into the endzone without giving us time to set up. It was pretty shitty. But we played well.

Then it was time to go home, with a scalp full of sunburn and a pocket full of memories.

Oh yeah, I leave for Las Vegas tomorrow. I'll let you know how that goes.

Roll-Bounce.

Robotic Plants

2008-01-30T20:47:00.000-06:00

I was thinking about the environment today. And how we need plants to convert Carbon Dioxide back into Oxygen for us to breathe and also so we can burn stuff. But. What if robots wanted to take over by destroying all the plant life on Earth. For what that might be like, watch this:

Back to the point. Robots try to kill all our plants, til there's only a couple left that a human rebel force must defend to save the race. That's the theme of Save the Last Plants, a sweet sci-fi short story I'm going to write. Maybe.

But really, why can't we make some sort of machine that converts CO2 to O2? We just need to get rid of that stupid Carbon, and plants can do it, and we're like a billion times smarter than plants. Admittedly, I know next to nothing about chemistry, but i'm sure some people do, and there shoud be a way to figure this out. Think about it. We could just cut down the whole rainforest and replace it with a sweet metropolis of solar-powered robotic trees. How ill would that be?! And for all you tree-huggers out there, I have this little nugget of wisdom for you to chew on: no matter how many trees we cut down, there will always be an environment.

So there.

The Circular Ruins

2008-01-25T11:57:00.000-06:00

The Circular Ruins is a mind-blowing short story by Jorge Luis Borges. Borges joins Gabriel Garcia Marquez (100 Years of Solitude) in the lofty realm of Latin American Magical Realism. This is the kind of story I love reading. It's very short, the language is amazing, and it blows your mind conceptually. I hope you like it as much as I do:

The Circular Ruins
By Jorge Luis Borges

No one saw him disembark in the unanimous night, no one saw the bamboo canoe sink into the sacred mud, but in a few days there was no one who did not know that the taciturn man came from the South and that his home had been one of those numberless villages upstream in the deeply cleft side of the mountain, where the Zend language has not been contaminated by Greek and where leprosy is infrequent. What is certain is that the grey man kissed the mud, climbed up the bank with pushing aside (probably, without feeling) the blades which were lacerating his flesh, and crawled, nauseated and bloodstained, up to the circular enclosure crowned with a stone tiger or horse, which sometimes was the color of flame and now was that of ashes. This circle was a temple which had been devoured by ancient fires, profaned by the miasmal jungle, and whose god no longer received the homage of men. The stranger stretched himself out beneath the pedestal. He was awakened by the sun high overhead. He was not astonished to find that his wounds had healed; he closed his pallid eyes and slept, not through weakness of flesh but through determination of will. He knew that this temple was the place required for his invincible intent; he knew that the incessant trees had not succeeded in strangling the ruins of another propitious temple downstream which had once belonged to gods now burned and dead; he knew that his immediate obligation was to dream. Toward midnight he was awakened by the inconsolable shriek of a bird. Tracks of bare feet, some figs and a jug warned him that the men of the region had been spying respectfully on his sleep, soliciting his protection or afraid of his magic. He felt a chill of fear, and sought out a sepulchral niche in the dilapidated wall where he concealed himself among unfamiliar leaves.

The purpose which guided him was not impossible, though supernatural. He wanted to dream a man; he wanted to dream him in minute entirety and impose him on reality. This magic project had exhausted the entire expanse of his mind; if someone had asked him his name or to relate some event of his former life, he would not have been able to give an answer. This uninhabited, ruined temple suited him, for it is contained a minimum of visible world; the proximity of the workmen also suited him, for they took it upon themselves to provide for his frugal needs. The rice and fruit they brought him were nourishment enough for his body, which was consecrated to the sole task of sleeping and dreaming.

At first, his dreams were chaotic; then in a short while they became dialectic in nature. The stranger dreamed that he was in the center of a circular amphitheater which was more or less the burnt temple; clouds of taciturn students filled the tiers of seats; the faces of the farthest ones hung at a distance of many centuries and as high as the stars, but their features were completely precise. The man lectured his pupils on anatomy, cosmography, and magic: the faces listened anxiously and tried to answer understandingly, as if they guessed the importance of that examination which would redeem one of them from his condition of empty illusion and interpolate him into the real world. Asleep or awake, the man thought over the answers of his phantoms, did not allow himself to be deceived by imposters, and in certain perplexities he sensed a growing intelligence. He was seeking a soul worthy of participating in the universe.

After nine or ten nights he understood with a certain bitterness that he could expect nothing from those pupils who accepted his doctrine passively, but that he could expect something from those who occasionally dared to oppose him. The former group, although worthy of love and affection, could not ascend to the level of individuals; the latter pre-existed to a slightly greater degree. One afternoon (now afternoons were also given over to sleep, now he was only awake for a couple hours at daybreak) he dismissed the vast illusory student body for good and kept only one pupil. He was a taciturn, sallow boy, at times intractable, and whose sharp features resembled of those of his dreamer. The brusque elimination of his fellow students did not disconcert him for long; after a few private lessons, his progress was enough to astound the teacher. Nevertheless, a catastrophe took place. One day, the man emerged from his sleep as if from a viscous desert, looked at the useless afternoon light which he immediately confused with the dawn, and understood that he had not dreamed. All that night and all day long, the intolerable lucidity of insomnia fell upon him. He tried exploring the forest, to lose his strength; among the hemlock he barely succeeded in experiencing several short snatchs of sleep, veined with fleeting, rudimentary visions that were useless. He tried to assemble the student body but scarcely had he articulated a few brief words of exhortation when it became deformed and was then erased. In his almost perpetual vigil, tears of anger burned his old eyes.

He understood that modeling the incoherent and vertiginous matter of which dreams are composed was the most difficult task that a man could undertake, even though he should penetrate all the enigmas of a superior and inferior order; much more difficult than weaving a rope out of sand or coining the faceless wind. He swore he would forget the enormous hallucination which had thrown him off at first, and he sought another method of work. Before putting it into execution, he spent a month recovering his strength, which had been squandered by his delirium. He abandoned all premeditation of dreaming and almost immediately succeeded in sleeping a reasonable part of each day. The few times that he had dreams during this period, he paid no attention to them. Before resuming his task, he waited until the moon's disk was perfect. Then, in the afternoon, he purified himself in the waters of the river, worshiped the planetary gods, pronounced the prescribed syllables of a mighty name, and went to sleep. He dreamed almost immediately, with his heart throbbing.

He dreamed that it was warm, secret, about the size of a clenched fist, and of a garnet color within the penumbra of a human body as yet without face or sex; during fourteen lucid nights he dreampt of it with meticulous love. Every night he perceived it more clearly. He did not touch it; he only permitted himself to witness it, to observe it, and occasionally to rectify it with a glance. He perceived it and lived it from all angles and distances. On the fourteenth night he lightly touched the pulmonary artery with his index finger, then the whole heart, outside and inside. He was satisfied with the examination. He deliberately did not dream for a night; he took up the heart again, invoked the name of a planet, and undertook the vision of another of the principle organs. Within a year he had come to the skeleton and the eyelids. The innumerable hair was perhaps the most difficult task. He dreamed an entire man--a young man, but who did not sit up or talk, who was unable to open his eyes. Night after night, the man dreamt him asleep.

In the Gnostic cosmosgonies, demiurges fashion a red Adam who cannot stand; as a clumsy, crude and elemental as this Adam of dust was the Adam of dreams forged by the wizard's nights. One afternoon, the man almost destroyed his entire work, but then changed his mind. (It would have been better had he destroyed it.) When he had exhausted all supplications to the deities of earth, he threw himself at the feet of the effigy which was perhaps a tiger or perhaps a colt and implored its unknown help. That evening, at twilight, he dreamt of the statue. He dreamt it was alive, tremulous: it was not an atrocious bastard of a tiger and a colt, but at the same time these two firey creatures and also a bull, a rose, and a storm. This multiple god revealed to him that his earthly name was Fire, and that in this circular temple (and in others like it) people had once made sacrifices to him and worshiped him, and that he would magically animate the dreamed phantom, in such a way that all creatures, except Fire itself and the dreamer, would believe to be a man of flesh and blood. He commanded that once this man had been instructed in all the rites, he should be sent to the other ruined temple whose pyramids were still standing downstream, so that some voice would glorify him in that deserted edifice. In the dream of the man that dreamed, the dreamed one awoke.

The wizard carried out the orders he had been given. He devoted a certain length of time (which finally proved to be two years) to instructing him in the mysteries of the universe and the cult of fire. Secretly, he was pained at the idea of being separated from him. On the pretext of pedagogical necessity, each day he increased the number of hours dedicated to dreaming. He also remade the right shoulder, which was somewhat defective. At times, he was disturbed by the impression that all this had already happened . . . In general, his days were happy; when he closed his eyes, he thought: Now I will be with my son. Or, more rarely: The son I have engendered is waiting for me and will not exist if I do not go to him.

Gradually, he began accustoming him to reality. Once he ordered him to place a flag on a faraway peak. The next day the flag was fluttering on the peak. He tried other analogous experiments, each time more audacious. With a certain bitterness, he understood that his son was ready to be born--and perhaps impatient. That night he kissed him for the first time and sent him off to the other temple whose remains were turning white downstream, across many miles of inextricable jungle and marshes. Before doing this (and so that his son should never know that he was a phantom, so that he should think himself a man like any other) he destroyed in him all memory of his years of apprenticeship.

His victory and peace became blurred with boredom. In the twilight times of dusk and dawn, he would prostrate himself before the stone figure, perhaps imagining his unreal son carrying out identical rites in other circular ruins downstream; at night he no longer dreamed, or dreamed as any man does. His perceptions of the sounds and forms of the universe became somewhat pallid: his absent son was being nourished by these diminution of his soul. The purpose of his life had been fulfilled; the man remained in a kind of ecstasy. After a certain time, which some chronicles prefer to compute in years and others in decades, two oarsmen awoke him at midnight; he could not see their faces, but they spoke to him of a charmed man in a temple of the North, capable of walking on fire without burning himself. The wizard suddenly remembered the words of the god. He remembered that of all the creatures that people the earth, Fire was the only one who knew his son to be a phantom. This memory, which at first calmed him, ended by tormenting him. He feared lest his son should meditate on this abnormal privilege and by some means find out he was a mere simulacrum. Not to be a man, to be a projection of another man's dreams--what an incomparable humiliation, what madness! Any father is interested in the sons he has procreated (or permitted) out of the mere confusion of happiness; it was natural that the wizard should fear for the future of that son whom he had thought out entrail by entrail, feature by feature, in a thousand and one secret nights.

His misgivings ended abruptly, but not without certain forewarnings. First (after a long drought) a remote cloud, as light as a bird, appeared on a hill; then, toward the South, the sky took on the rose color of leopard's gums; then came clouds of smoke which rusted the metal of the nights; afterwards came the panic-stricken flight of wild animals. For what had happened many centuries before was repeating itself. The ruins of the sanctuary of the god of Fire was destroyed by fire. In a dawn without birds, the wizard saw the concentric fire licking the walls. For a moment, he thought of taking refuge in the water, but then he understood that death was coming to crown his old age and absolve him from his labors. He walked toward the sheets of flame. They did not bite his flesh, they caressed him and flooded him without heat or combustion. With relief, with humiliation, with terror, he understood that he also was an illusion, that someone else was dreaming him.

Word up.

Fat Kid Falls Down

2008-01-21T00:52:00.000-06:00

Let me first say that I unconditionally love any and all people of size. Unfortunately there aren't hilarious youtube videos of thin people falling down. Just type "fat kid falls down" into your Youtube search box and laugh for hours. You will find that thin kid falls down, will have much less satisfactory results. Here are some of my favorites:

Fat Kid DDR

Fat Kid Falls for Peer Pressure (literally)

Fat Kid Reaches for Rainbow and Falls Short

Slip N Slide Rejects Fatty

Fat Boy attempts to scare sister, gets owned

Fat Kid incurs nasty fall from van

Fat Swimmer has Diving Mishap

Adorably Chubby Child Falls off Log Thanks to Traitorous Friend

Fat Boy Suffers on Rollercoaster to Delight of Mother

Spread the word.

Imagining the Tenth Dimension

2008-01-18T14:07:00.001-06:00

I remember watching this video at 4 AM, piss drunk two days before new years. It blew my mind then, it still blows my mind now. Also, if you've read (and hated) the trashy YA novel series A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L'Engle, you'll finally be able to understand tesseract, which is the fucked-up way they teleport by going through the fifth dimension. I used to think it was bullshit (who didn't) but now I kind of get it. I hate Madeline L'engle, but I love this video. I hope we can still be friends after you put your mind back together.

Fun Things to Yell at Hockey Games

2008-01-13T14:15:00.000-06:00

I'm just gonna put this out there. Hockey games are boring. Unless you're drunk. First let me tell you how that came to be. So you know the Power Hour right, a shot of beer every minute for an hour, well me and my roommate had this great idea of making a power hour playlist ( you can download a program to do it here) using only shitty 90's music that makes us angry (Nickelback, Sum 41, All American Rejects). The idea was to get drunk and furious before catching a bus to the Carleton men's hockey opener. I'd say it was pretty successful.

Now things got hilarious as soon as we were waiting for the bus. Imagine a writhing mass of 150+ drunk college students each trying as hard as they can to get on to 70-person school bus. It was like a mosh pit with more pain and less music. So after I had headbutted my way to seat in the third row, it was time to be belligerent.

I got to the hockey game and took up my shouting position at the top of the bleachers and the following are things I may or may not have yelled at the top of my lungs (with a little help from a flask of peppermint schnapps):

"Kill the non-believers!"

"Win it for the heathens!"

"Blood for Oil!"

"God hates the other team!"

"Break the bonds of the oppressor!"

"Beat his ass! Beat his ass! Beat his fuckin' ass!"

"Lightning bolt...Lightning bolt...lightning bolt...lightning bolt...death...death...Death DEATH DEATH DEATH DEATH DEATH!"

It was good times. I don't think I really affected the game any, but the crowd enjoyed me. Carleton wins 4-1. Then I went home, smoked 5 bowls, drank some more, and passed out playing pokemon. Later bitches.