Athleticism Is A Cancer On Civilization

The local Sports Media was feverishly masturbating this weekend over one of their inspirational, feel-good stories. KU basketball star overcomes personal tragedy to support his team mates!

On Saturday morning KU basketball player Thomas Robinson received a phone call from his 9 year old sister informing him that his mother had died of a heart attack the previous night.

His immediate response? LET'S PLAY BASKETBALL!

Because obviously, playing a fucking basketball game is far more important than being a big brother to your 9 year old sister who just lost her mother.

The local sports media is playing this up like a Supreme Noble Athlete with a huge heart who didn't allow a personal tragedy to let his team mates down.

Bull. Fucking. Shit.

This is a stupid jock with some seriously fucked up priorities.

IT'S JUST A FUCKING GAME! Go hug your sister. Go be with your family. Fuck the game! Tell the KU Athletic Department to go pound sand up their ass. They can afford a lot of sand.

Unless, of course, like most athletes, you put your own potential (yet INCREDIBLY unlikely) multi-million dollar career above and beyond every other concern in life.

Viewed through that sad, selfish prism, I suppose you can justify playing a stupid fucking game while your mother is being embalmed and your 9 year old sister is growing up way too fast without you.

To paraphrase Karl Marx, it is sports, as much as religion, that is the opiate of the masses.

It is a totally mindless and responsive addiction that requires no intellectual rigour. It adds nothing to society other than a distraction from our real problems.

If the money spent on sports was directed at medical research, our average lifespan would be 200 years old instead of 72.

XO's BLT

You start with a couple of slices of Texas Toast and some Land O' Lakes Honey Butter.



Butter one side of the Texas Toast with the Honey Butter and put them under the broiler until golden brown.



Flip the one-sided toast over and lightly spread some real mayonnaise on the un-toasted side.



Sprinkle some freshly shredded Parmesan cheese on the mayonnaise side of the bread



Add some lettuce



Some sliced Roma tomatoes



Some bacon



And VOILA! A delicious BLT!



Enjoy!

Fuck the Second Amendment

There is no way in Hell this motherfucker should have ever been allowed to own a gun and buy ammo at a Walmart.



In fact, NO ONE should be allowed to own a gun and buy ammo unless they can prove they have a responsible need for a a gun and have the intelligence, training and emotional maturity to be trusted with a gun.

Hunters? Fuck you. You can buy meat at grocery stores. I don't care how many miles of shitty gravel roads separate us from your rural "paradise". You can still buy beef, chicken, pork, turkey and even goose and duck at the nearest grocery store. You don't need your own personal arsenal to feed your family.

If you want to buy a gun you should have to answer the following questions:

1: Why do you need one? (provide supporting documentation/evidence)
2: Why should the people around you trust you with one? Seriously. Why should you be trusted with the power to kill somebody?

Finally, there should be a "you look weird" test.

Telling someone "Nah, you look odd and I'm getting a creepy vibe from you. I'm not selling you a weapon that you could use to kill people" should be the prevailing policy at every retail outlet.

I don't know anyone, including myself, that I would trust to own a gun.

Some Photos From My Archives

Ancient Aliens My Big Black Ass!

For some inexplicable reason, I watched an episode of Ancient Aliens tonight.



Which, by the way, is exactly like watching any given program on Fox News. A steaming pile of bullshit lightly sprinkled with a few grains of fact.

But I digress.

OK, so all of these huge, ancient, megalithic monuments are astronomical observatories built by our ancestors with the help of aliens.

Let me get this straight.


The nearest star (other than the sun) is Proxima Centauri and it is 4.5 light years away.


So these ancient aliens who had the technology 6,000 years ago to travel light years to get here and make contact with our stone age ancestors said "Hey dudes! We're more advanced than your ancestors will be for another 7,000 years! We're gonna help you out and leave a little "easter egg" hinting at our existence. We're going to teach you how to build telescopes out of BIG ASS ROCKS that only work twice a year!!"


Now, they could have said "We're going to leave you this 1 trillion megapixel telescope powered by an eternal energy source built out of starship hull-metal alloy and protected by an impervious force field that will preserve and protect it for billions of years and it will remain pointed at our home star system forever. All you have to do is look at it. Oh, and when this light over here comes on...it's time to plant your crops. When this other light over here comes on, you can harvest your crops. You're welcome."


But no. Ancient aliens with technology that is indistinguishable from magic travelled light years to visit barbarians to teach them how to stack rocks more better.


Right. That makes perfect sense. If you watch Fox News.

My Top 10 Blog Posts - Evah!

I started this blog on January 23rd, 2006. So I've been at this for almost 5 years and have over 1450 posts up.

I've never been concerned about how many readers I have or how many hits I get. That's not why I'm here.

But I recently clicked on my Stats according to Blogger.com and found the results somewhat interesting.

Strictly in terms of Page Views, these are my Top Ten Posts of All Time.

10. "Guest Blogger" April 18, 2007: 726 Page Views - I copied and pasted a diatribe from Lee Iacocca. Virtually no original content.

9. "Speaking of Ice" December 10, 2007: 980 Page Views - My review of Dan Simmons book 'The Terror'.

8. "WWI Museum" November 11, 2007: 1,062 Page Views - My appreciation of our incredible World War I Memorial and museum. It is an international treasure.

7. "Beer Can Chicken" November 27, 2010: 1,183 Page Views - This recent post got a boost from this mention on The Pitch's Fat City blog.

6. "Beneath The Temple of Quetzalcoatl" August 7, 2010: 3,157 Page Views - Just some cool archaeological research results from Central Mexico.

5. "Soccer Is So Incredibly Gay" June 18, 2010: 4,969 Page Views - This was my lamest post ever. I just Google Imaged "Soccer is gay" and posted the images without comment. I credit the popularity of this post to all of the closeted gay, pretentious, American, Anglophile soccer fan wannabes who get wood whenever they hear someone say "Manchester United" or "Arsenal".

4. "Das Boot" January 27, 2009: 5,102 Page Views - This was a post about my fucked up feet. Seriously?

3. "Gay Marriage Finally A Reality" June 16, 2008: 7,383 Page Views - Strong on subject and visuals, light on original content.

2. "Business Travel" December 19, 2007: 10,344 Page Views - My build up to tell the Tonto Kowaslki joke. Really, people?

My most popular post ever? Drum roll.....

1. "Tattoos and Piercings" July 26, 2008: 33,360 Page Views - Wow. I should post more about tats. Something I know absolutely nothing about. LOL! You fuckers are funny!

This is precisely why I don't craft my posts to generate traffic.

I think I'll keep writing about whatever the fuck I want and let the stats be damned.

An Environmental No Brainer

I don't normally write about environmental issues. I don't even recycle so I don't have any standing to be pontificating on the virtues of being green.

But a couple of recent inputs came together to generate some thoughts.

I watched a documentary the other day about the Great Migration that takes place in the Serengeti.

"The extraordinary annual Great Migration of wildebeest and other grazing herbivores across the Serengeti-Mara ecosystem is one of the greatest spectacles in the natural world. Over two million herbivores partake in this journey, with about 200 000 zebra and 500 000 Thomson's gazelle behind the main players... one-and-a-half million wildebeest!"

It was absolutely fascinating. It is the last great migration left on the planet. American Bison used to participate in a similar migration before the Europeans showed up and, well, ya know, killed them all and built all kinds shit like highways, railroads and fences that prevented any mass land migrations by any animals.

Then I saw a news story tonight about plans to build a huge highway straight across the Serengeti to handle commercial mining traffic from newly discovered Rare Earth Element deposits in Tanzania to shipping ports at Lake Victoria.

"REEs are widely used in emerging "Green" technologies. Each hybrid Toyota Prius is reported to contain 66 lbs of REEs. REEs are used in wind turbines, compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs), flat panel displays, catalytic converters, motors and magnets. Military uses include radar and guidance systems."

So the demand for the natural resources that allow us to be more "Green" threatens to destroy one of the greatest, open ecosystems left on Earth by disrupting their natural migration routes. African wildebeests, zebras and gazelles would suffer the same fate as American possums, skunks and raccoons. Roadkill.

Building a highway across the Serengeti would put in place an incredibly expensive piece of environmentally destructive infrastructure that would need continual maintenance and repair while allowing polluting diesel trucks to belch poison into the fragile ecosystem.

The need to get the REEs from mine to port can be accomplished faster, cheaper and with absolutely no impact on the Great Migration or the Serengeti ecosystem by using cargo airships.





You put an Airship Port at the REE mine.

You put an Airship Port at Lake Victoria.

You transport the REEs across the Serengeti without impacting the environment below. In fact rather than building a drive-through highway for poachers, you could equip the Airships with high-tech surveillance equipment to scan for poachers and serve as wireless communication hubs to link law enforcement and park rangers.

The Airships could be the equivalent of Serengeti AWAC units protecting the area by coordinating government resources.

This is so obvious. Just fucking do it.