Weekend Without Common Sense

Let's have a "Weekend Without Oil"....because oil companies are evil, MAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN!

Go check out the site and all of its pomposity, specifically, its first two points. Better yet, I'll list them right here.

1. Walk or ride your bike: Avoid using cars and if you must, always try to carpool. Transportation accounts for 40 percent of our petroleum consumption and is easily one of the biggest areas we need to improve upon.
2. Enjoy the outdoors: Avoid buying new sporting equipment, since oil makes up nearly 25% of rubber. Footballs or basketballs, for example, can last for many years and used equipment is often just as good and will reduce demand for oil needed to make new rubber.

They didn't even bother to put some space between points number 1 and 2 on their list. Walk or ride your bike, but don't use any rubber! I don't know about you, but I just love walking barefoot on streets and sidewalks in mid-August.

These clowns do a great job of promoting the "drill-baby-drill" agenda, by showing just how much in our society depends on oil, and just how bad life is going to suck if we restrict the supply and tax the shit out of it, like certain people who can afford it seem to want to do.

I Know What They're Really Saying

Probably because one would need divine power in order to "perform" for these oinkers.

H/T to the San Francisco Weekly blogs and Nick Lucchesi on Twitter.

If You're Reading This...

...then Homer Simpson has something to tell you.

No, seriously. They did a study and everything. Of course, that's only true of other, lesser blogs. Reading this one makes you 100% more masculine and heterosexual. Kind of like the Old Spice Guy. Although watching that commercial might make you gay too. I'm not sure. I'll let you know after I watch it a few more times.

New Blogroll Link: The Oily Pelican

I've got a new site in my blogroll section, and it's one that I'm reading daily: The Oily Pelican. It's written by a friend of mine who, in her own words, "decided to trade in her cushy desk job for chest waders, snake boots, and 90-degree heat to go help with the environmental effort on the Louisiana coast." It's a firsthand account, not filtered through some PR department or condensed into a press release, and that's really important if you care at all about what's going on down there. (And if you don't, then you're a sorry excuse for a human being, and I pray for your death.)

Craig Kilborn Must Die

Or his new show must be canceled. I'm not a picky man.

No, I've never seen it. But here in the greater Philly area, the local Fox affiliate has removed their last syndicated Simpsons slot in favor of this dreck that appears to be, based on the commercials, the gawdawful TMZ-on-TV meets the admittedly-funny early Daily Show. The nightly Simpsons rerun is what I'd relied on to watch/listen to as I drift off to sleep every night. I'd seen them all a hundred times, so I never worried about missing anything, and hey, anything's better than being alone in the dark with only your own thoughts trying to go to sleep, right?

I guess it's on to House reruns as a replacement, at least for the time being. But I shudder to think about the effect on my brain absorbing that guy into my subconscious as I teeter on the edge of sleep. I just hope it doesn't turn me into a cynical, sarcastic jerk.

Vu-Vu-Zao

In the same vein as yesterday's post, here's yet another reason why I'm a lifelong Yankee fan. They know enough to nip this vuvuzela nonsense in the bud. What an idiot this guy is, too. "Duh, OK, I'll give up my twenty dollar seat so that I can hold onto a $2 piece of plastic that's been down the front of my pants. Not so much because I like blowing a horn as much as because the mouthpiece tastes like Funyuns." At least, I assume this is the typical mindset of an American vuvuzela-blower.

If you ask me, they didn't treat him harshly enough. Security would have been more than justified in giving him the Philly treatment. Or the Seattle treatment. Or just put it back into his pants...from a slightly different angle. (Yeah, I hate vuvuzelas.) On the other hand, that probably isn't the best solution. If anything, it might just make the noise louder.

Vu-Vu-Ka-Choo

I've been watching a little bit of World Cup this year, despite the fact that the extent of my knowledge of the sport is what I can remember from playing on my elementary school club teams from the ages of 8 through 12. It really is interesting to watch....like hockey without the sticks, played on a field the size of a small U.S. state. And even though I found the vuvuzelas somewhat....off-putting, I was against banning them, at least at first. After all, part of international competitions is experiencing the host country's local "flavor" and traditions, right? But then I read a little bit about them, and it turns out that there's nothing local or traditional about them, at least where it comes to soccer games. See, the idea was "borrowed" from Central and South American countries, and wasn't introduced in South Africa until sometime in the 1990s. So I've changed my mind--get rid of the freakin' things. Or at least filter them out of the broadcast audio.

Kicking Kissing Ass

One week, the political talking heads and polls are saying that Obama isn't showing enough emotion, and specifically anger, in dealing with the BP situation. Meanwhile, the headlines are all about the allegations that the White House offered PA Democrat Senate nominee Joe Sestak a cushy White House job in order to stay out of the primary against ex-Republican Arlen Specter.

Then, yesterday morning, we get this:



So is this the our courageous leader getting tough on those polluters, or a career politician putting a wet finger in the air to see which way the political winds are blowing? I know which way I'm leaning, but I'll leave it up to you, the reader, to decide. Personally, I don't want my president ranting like Carlo from The Godfather, screaming at BP to "clean it up!" I tend to agree with White House press secretary Robert Gibbs--the administration will be judged on how it performs rather than what it says during this crisis. I hope that ends up being more good than bad, but based on what I've seen so far, I'm not optimistic.

A Sad Day For Baseball

No, I'm not talking about Jim Joyce, although I do think he should be given a prostate exam with a cactus. I'm talking about The Kid, Ken Griffey Jr., and his retirement. It truly is the end of an era, and not just for the Mariners and Reds. (Not just for the White Sox era, though for them, the Ken Griffey Jr. era lasted for about two months back in 2008, so I think they're over it by now.) No, this is the end of an era for the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant All-Star Team, for the last of Mr. Burns's All-Stars has hung up his spikes and called it a career.

The Iran With The Plan

They must have one helluva think tank over there in Iran. They've come up with a way to prevent both earthquakes and melanoma....all at the same time! I don't know how we manage to avoid an all-out war with a government as reactionary and backwards-thinking as this. How are we even supposed to relate to this? We have iPads and astronauts; they blame seismic events on the giant man in the sky getting mad. And these are the people we're supposed to want to improve our relationships with?

Wii-bles Wobble And Sometimes Fall Down

The headline on the front page of FoxNews.com reads: "Woman's Persistent Genital Arousal Blamed on Wii Fit". But open the article, and you'll get a completely different story. But you've got to hand it to them. Sex sells, and so do cool tech toys. Sexy tech? As Jim Breuer would say, "Jackpot!" See, this woman's problems weren't caused by some weird exercise or yoga pose that the Wii Fit told her to do. No, this clumsy bitch slipped and fell off the equipment and damaged a nerve. C'mon, Fox...this wouldn't even be a story if her condition were a result of falling off a treadmill. You can (justly) criticize other media outlets all you want, but running stories like this for the sake of ratings/clickthroughs/ad impressions just makes you look like a bunch of hypocrites.

Slow and Steady Wins The Race Gets You Yelled At

The 2010 baseball season is five days old, and already my beloved Yankees are the source of controversy. Seems the crew chief of their opening series against the hated Red Sox, Cowboy Joe West, wasn't happy with the pace of Tuesday night's game.

Well, excu-u-u-u-u-se us, fatbody. The game takes time because the teams take their time. This is only one of the most important series all year for both teams, teams who are going to be neck and neck at each other all year with not only a playoff spot but possible home field advantage for the ALCS and a trip to the World Series and, oh, yeah, by the way, about a gajillion zillion dollars on the line, God forbid they play the game deliberately, neither throwing the ball right down the chute or swinging at pitches in the dirt. If you don't like it, you can always go be an NFL referee...oh, that's right, I forgot, they don't pay as much as MLB does, so your fat lazy ass would have to get a job for the eight months of the year they're not in season, and no, I'm not counting the playoffs in that, because with your attitude and your Grand Canyon-sized strike zone, there's no way you'd ever get named to a postseason crew. If you don't understand the dynamics of the division structure or the fact that fans of this rivalry would gladly watch these two teams go head to head for eight hours, let alone four, then maybe it's time for you to move on and focus on your music career.