Amphibious Warfare

The Weatherbug forecast for tomorrow afternoon (this is what I do on Saturday nights, sit home and read the Weatherbug because its so...free):

"Mostly cloudy. Some sun. Slight chance of rain or snow showers in the morning. Highs in the lower 50's."

I've heard of covering all your bases before but I mean COME ON! Am I right? Huh? Am I right or what? I mean it's ridiculous. GOD IT'S ALL SO FUCKING RIDICULOUS!!!!!

Whatcugonnado with all them facts?

(Note: The article below consists solely of the opinions of its author and is in no way a reflection of the views, opinions, or ideas of, apparently, any one else in the whole world.)

My good friend Brett believes the information swapped on the internet by members of our amazing race is generally useless. While I tend to agree with this evaluation, I find it incumbent on me, being a man of action, to at least do my part and impart (how ‘bout that) some valuable knowledge to people around the globe (or at least around the Northeast.)

For this article I have put aside my normal procedure of copying information from websites and repeating it in an ironic fashion and instead posted something straight from the heart

My great hope is that others will follow suit and that this unrestricted exchange of ideas will trigger a Golden Age for our Civilization. (This is something I know a good deal about, as I have already brought about three Golden Ages for my Roman civilization as we approach the Modern era, as well as produced a large number of great leaders and half of all the Great Wonders on the planet. Granted, I am playing on the Chieften difficulty and automating my workers, but I did it all without employing slavery and limited my warmongering to the destruction of Germany, who had the impunity to settle their capital on my eastern seaboard.)

What follows are a few “power points” I have found helpful for daily living. Enjoy!

- The Song “My Humps” is bad. If you like this song, you need to reevaluate your life. If it is, in fact, “your jam”, I fear we may already be too late.

- I found a great new diet. It’s called the Uganda Diet. It involves not eating. This fab (not fad) diet has been doing wonders in third world countries for decades and has finally made its way across the Atlantic. Check next month’s Cosmo for details.

- You shouldn’t raise children in New York City. If you have a young child and are currently living in Manhattan, move to the suburbs (and lease me your apartment). This way you won’t face questions like “why are there no videos in the video store”, or “why did that man just pee between the subway cars”, (a question I had to ask myself this morning) or “why doesn’t anyone help that man sleeping on the sewer grate,” before an age where you can simply say “because that’s the way the world works.”

- Mexicans should be given free beer. They work hard. Harder than you or me. We get free nachos and salsa at their restaurants. They should get a few free beers after work.

- The boy’s bad news.

- If you are riding the ferry from Staten Island to Manhattan, the Statue of Liberty is on your left. If you are riding it from Manhattan to Staten Island then God help you and the Statue of Liberty is on your right. There. Now please stop asking me.

- The guy from Underworld? The dead guy from CSI? A.J. on American Idol? John Stamos? Scott Stapp?!? I find it hard to believe I resemble these people.

- The Fidelity Investments commercial with "Innagoddadavida" playing and swirling LSD-like images in the background is definitive proof that individual people don’t matter.

- A mixed drink shouldn’t cost $11 dollars. I don’t care what city I am in.

- People don’t like to talk about politics. If you want to say something about politics you better make sure it is funny. If it isn’t funny, it will be disregarded. The only time it is acceptable to talk about politics is when you are surrounded by people that already agree with you. People enjoy agreeing with each other. Very liberal people, for instance, all agree George Bush is bad. They enjoy very much to talk about this. Very conservative people all agree that sports are great and money is even greater. They will speak on these topics for hours, all the while devouring the hearts of America’s youth. (Was that funny enough?)

- In a related matter, our Congress has done nothing about lobbying reform. According to Chris Matthews, who wears more make-up than most drag queens, lobbying reform is “losing steam” in the House of Representatives. We should do something about that. Like vote for other people and then ask them to place greater restrictions on themselves.

- I know nothing about college basketball. This is made clear to me every March.

- In any given half-hour time slot, CNN Headline News spends about 10 minutes on actual news. The rest of the time is devoted to sports, entertainment and commercials. Watch it and tell me I’m wrong.

- Electronic music is not good. You shouldn’t have to take drugs in order to enjoy something. (Life, for instance.) Imagine if I fed you a sandwich but told you it would only taste good if you took a pill an hour beforehand. You would say that’s a bad sandwich.

If there is a girl out there that agrees with all of the above (and is hot), will you marry me?

(P.S. There is a show on CBS tonight called “Time Bomb.” Is it about Jake?)

"Another symptom of progress toward the Singularity: ideas themselves should spread ever faster, and even the most radical will quickly become commonplace."

- Vernor Vinge "The Technological Singularity"

U.S. Slaughters South Africans

The U.S. Baseball team blanked South Africa and posted 17 runs in a game that ended after 5 innings due to the World Baseball Classic’s mercy rule.

Roger Clemons pitched 4 1/3 scoreless innings and promptly retired from baseball, only to resume his career in the next five minutes. South Africa’s starter, Carl Michaels, somehow contracted HIV during the 2nd inning and was replaced by seventeen year old Jared Eliro, who managed to pitch a scoreless inning against the American fat cats.

During the 4th, apartheid was ended in the homeland of the visiting team, and some of the black players, held in a cell underneath the dugout of Scottsdale Stadium, which usually serves as the spring training facility for the San Francisco Giants and a massive containment unit for Barry Bonds, were released and allowed to play (but not vote.)

With their win over the mineral rich and Western-friendly nation, the U.S. has entered the second-round of play. A shocking loss to lame Canada in the first round made the merciful destruction of South Africa a must for the American Empire.

The team representing the nation blessed by God will meet Japan in the second round on Sunday, assuming, of course, that the Japanese players don’t join an internet-suicide cult and off themselves before the opening pitch. (Read about it: http://www.msnbc.com/news/922190.asp?cp1=1)

Is baseball still the American pastime? Or has it been outsourced like your father's last job?

Let's find out.

Something to Believe In

Of all the UFO lore that exists in the public sphere,
no incident is more compelling or raises more eyebrows than the Rendlesham Forest Incident.


Sometimes called “Britain’s Rosewell,” the Rendlesham incident took place over the Christmas holiday in 1980 outside a United States Air Force Base in the English countryside . On two consecutive nights, four different U.S. Airmen claim to have witnessed a glowing object that landed in a small field within the forest, a pulsing red light that moved toward them in the distance, and finally a craft in the sky that sent beams of white light down to the earth, many in the vicinity of a nuclear weapons stock that was a then a part of the airbase.

Later, a civilian came forward and claimed to have witnessed a group of military men huddled around the spacecraft, speaking to three tiny alien beings in sign language. (At the risk of being glib and offending Tom Cruise, this guy is pretty obviously full of it and out to make money so his testimonials will be ignored by this article.)

That leaves us with three eyewitness accounts by military personnel (one of the officers has refused to speak publicly), as well as a tape recording made by Lieutenant Colonel Charles Halt during his encounter with the “craft” and a memo he sent to British authorities two days later that was accompanied by a drawing of what he believed he saw.

The tape recording is by far the most compelling evidence for some kind of encounter at Rendlesham. The embarrassment in Halt’s voice at having to investigate such an outlandish claim in the opening moments of the tape is in stark contrast to the obvious fear he feels as he talks about a “red light” coming towards the men and a bright beam being sent down from a craft in the sky.

Two days later Hart composed a brief memo documenting the encounter.

This memo, sent by Hart to British Intelligence, was somehow intercepted by a local newspaper called “News of the World” which ran an article about a week after the incident headlined “UFO LANDS IN SUFFOLK: AND THAT’S OFFICIAL.”

A number of documentaries have been made about the Rendlesham incident. (One of these “UFO Files: Britain’s Rosewell” airs intermittently on the History channel, presumably because it garners higher ratings than actual historical programming)

What makes this particular encounter so compelling is the caliber of the witnesses involved. All three continued to serve in the military after Rendlesham and have now retired. All are reluctant to call their experience a “UFO sighting.” For the most part, they seem to be down-to-earth, reasonable and unassuming. They don’t appear (overly) interested in money. (One of the men, Larry Warren, has published a book with a UFO researcher called "Left at East Gate". His claims are a bit more exaggerated than the other two, hinting at a government cover-up and a threat he received during an OSI investigation, “Bullets are cheap,” which seems to have become a bit of a catch phrase for conspiracists that report on the incident.)

That being said, nothing about their documented accounts or filmed interviews rings decidedly false and there is little evidence of the post-sighting hysteria, obvious exaggeration of facts, or manipulative insinuation that usually accompanies extraterrestrial allegations.

Skeptics of the Rendlesham affair claim it is much ado about little, sighting a lighthouse that stands a few miles from the forest and may have caused an optical illusion that convinced the men they were witnessing some otherworldly phenomenon. (One thing I am learning writing this, we certainly have developed a lot of different ways of calling something “Alien”)

There has also been talk of a meteor that struck the earth that same day, December 26, 1980.

(Cliché UFO documentary ending…)

So, what actually took place that fateful night outside a U.S. Airbase in Great Britain’s quiet backcountry? For now, no one is sure. Our government is silent on the matter. A silence that is read by some, like UFO researcher Georgina Bruni, as an admission of guilt. (Cut to way-too-attractive British author) “People want to know. What are they hiding. And why?” For others, it is simply an oversight. (Cut to old suit in glasses.) “The United States government has better things to do with it’s time and resources than investigate outlandish claims like Rendlesham.” Whatever your belief, one thing is clear. For those involved, the incident at Rendlesham is anything but a closed case. (Cut to UFO winess.) “To this day, it’s something I still think about. I’d like answers.”

Their plea is a plea we can all identify with. Are we alone? Is there something else? An intelligence greater than ours? Do Aliens exist? And if so, did they visit our planet on that cold winter night and brighten the dark sky?

The questions are many. The answers few. But still, we search…

"Highlights" from the 2006 Academy Awards on ABC

Alright, I guess this one falls to me…


Jessica Alba (let’s just get this out of the way...)

The inclusion of “The Day After Tomorrow” in the “Social Issues” montage. (GLOBAL WARMING IS COMING!)

My good friend's father leaving with only this odd photo to show for it.

"Crash" wins Best Picture. (Have you seen Crash? The white guy is only racist because his dad is dying and a pain in the ass to take care of. In the end, he saves the hot black chick from under the burning car, so he can’t be that bad, right? The Persian shopkeeper, he almost kills a little girl because he is cheap.)

A burning car onstage with slow motion dancing in the background and hollow, lifeless singing in the foreground.

Queen Latifah, quite by accident I’m sure, presents an Oscar to Three 6 Mafia. (Stewart after their acceptance speech: “How come they’re the most excited people here tonight?”)

"Memoirs of a Geisha" wins 3 awards despite the fact no one saw it.

Jon Stewart. He is funny. I like him.

Reese Witherspoon "acts" concerned.

Show posts its second worst rating in nearly two decades.

Pearl Jam accepts award by saying “I don’t know what this means. I don’t think this means anything.” (Wait, that was the Grammy’s…)

Fiona Apple accepts award by saying “All of this is bullshit” (Wait…)

Nothing like that happens.

Damn.

"Beheading Chic Hits Paris Fashion Week..."



Do I even have to write something derogatory about fashion under this?