Taken in Washington D.C. this weekend (Photo by Jeremy Clark)
Ow!
My eyes hurt from having to roll them so hard every time I read a "Hey, whatever happened to global warming? Look at all this snow!" news story/ blog post/ reader comment/ tweet/ glib verbal analysis.
As the East Coast got a record-setting
blast of winter weather this weekend and we in Chicago prepare for our own hit of snowfall, it's telling that no one is asking where exactly this unusually wet winter has its origins. From
mudslides in California to the
Southeast finally getting a dose of relieving precipitation, the winter of 2009-2010 is proving itself one to remember.
This is largely due to the global weather phenomenon known as El Niño.
Because scientists have to have complicated acronyms for everything, El Niño is more officially known as El Niño Southern Oscillation phenomenon or "ENSO" (atmospheric scientists call lunch the "Distribution of Mid-Day Nutrients and Caloric Energy" event).
ENSO is essentially a disruption of the atmosphere by warm waters in the tropical Pacific that has enormous consequences for the entire climate system and weather around the world. The current ENSO is one of the most drastic since 1997-1998 and is dumping record precipitation across the country.
Photo credit: Paramount Pictures
After concluding that the preview for "G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra" was one of
the most awesomely bad trailers ever, I knew I'd have to see the actual movie. The other night, my friends and I sat down to watch the film starring the likes of Marlon Wayans (the "Thinking Man's Wayans"), Channing Tatum (the "Thinking Man's Talentless Meathead") and Dennis Quaid (the "Thinking Man's Dennis Quaid").
I tell you this not to recap the viewing experience of "G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra" or even review it. I think my roommates, Liam and Elliott, gave it the two most thoughtful reviews in all of modern criticism:
"Even the CGI is shockingly bad." -Steve's roommate, Elliott
"They shouldn't even have credits at the end of this. They should just put 'A Bunch of F****ing Idiots' after every single job. Like, 'Written and Directed by a Bunch of F****ing Idiots.' 'Produced by a Bunch of F****ing Idiots.' 'Starring a Bunch of F****ing Idiots.'" -Steve's roommate, Liam
But like I said my point is not to review the "G.I. Joe" "film" but to explain how ashamed I am by how excited I got when I figured out the painfully obvious plot twist.
Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images
I'm really freaking excited about watching this John Edwards sex tape.
In case, you have not been following this, here's the deal: former presidential candidate John Edwards had this obscene, ridiculous affair with a documentary filmmaker named Reille Hunter, with whom he fathered a child and an alleged sex tape.
Edwards had anaide named Andrew Young (who initially said he was the father of the baby, just for another delicious twist), who just
wrote this book called "The Politician," in which he portrays Edwards to be a preening, narcissistic tool. In that book, he claims to have discovered and still possess a sex tape of Edwards and Hunter.
This is almost undoubtedly true because
Hunter is suing Young to get back "video recordings and photographs that depict matters of a private and personal nature," according to the restraining order.
Oh dear God, how juicy.
This is not BooDaddy! But he does have a beard like this guy
So my friend's last name is "Budin," pronounced "boo-din," and this has led us to start calling him "BooDaddy!"
He hates this nickname, though, and I'd like to say for the record that that is just effing crazy: BooDaddy! is a great nickname. And yes, like
Razzamatazz!, you need the exclamation point because every time you use such an awesome nickname, it has to be in reference to the aforementioned friend doing something awesome like:
-
Buying a round of drinks
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Talking about intercourse or intercourse-related practices
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Cavs win
It just rolls off the tongue. Try it: "Hey there, BooDaddy!"
Lauren Strec, filming from her bunker
There's a ChicagoNow blog called "
Hot on ChicagoNow," in which a very lovely young lady named Lauren Strec recaps some of the "hot" posts from around the ChicagoNow blog community in a daily video.
Some might call this a self-indulgent exercise on the part of ChicagoNow, but Lauren is so damn excited about the blogs that it kind of makes you pop up your head and be like, "You know, I really should check out how that
Met visitor fell on a Picasso at the Chicago Art Blog."
Here's all I'm saying: We have got to get Lauren a studio or something! The poor girl appears to be broadcasting from the bunker where Hitler retreated as the Allies closed in.
That might even be too nice: it's possible she's filming from Saddam Hussein's spiderhole or maybe the jail cell where Slobodan Milosevic spent his final days--only with a Sox flag in the background.
I, for one, will not stand for this. We at ChicagoNow should treat her better than a deposed and hunted authoritarian dictator.
An artist's conception of the future Mr. and Mrs. Stephen Markley (courtesy Paramount Pictures)
Men are more likely now than ever to marry women with more education and a higher income than them, according to an analysis of census data released by the Pew Research Center. This role reversal has led women to bemoan the fact that it's hard to find a man who is not insecure about earning less money.
My answer to these women: right here, baby.
When I read The New York Times article accompanying this report, I couldn't believe how many of the women interviewed were worried that this would make them unweddable because our half of the species have notoriously fragile egos.
Let me say, my ego is so lacking in self-awareness, it doesn't even know it exists. I say to this report, "Bad. Ass."
In other words, gravy train, I will board you now.
Photo courtesy FOX
I'm a pretty epic fan of the hit FOX drama '24,' and my roommate Liam and I have watched every episode so far this season in a state of supreme bliss.
However, I used to like '24' because I thought it was a good show. As late as Season 5, I was convinced that '24' represented the next evolutionary phase of the hour-long dramatic television serial and offered a haunting critique on our times.
However, over the last four years, spanning Seasons 6, 7 and now 8, I've come to realize that '24' is the single silliest motherf***ing thing ever to grace a television screen, but I love it all the same. It's kind of like one day you wake up and realize that your spouse has been ugly for your entire marriage, but it's okay because he or she is still great in bed.
The show is not good: it follows the same rote patterns and has a
worldview even more simplistic than that of, say, a five-year old. And, like I said, it's supremely silly.
'24' is sillier than a clown juggling slinkies for an audience of baby bears. It's sillier than Jesus Christ playing putt-putt golf while wearing a T-shirt that says "Saviour The Flavor" with an arrow pointing to His crotch. It's sillier than a baseball team playing basketball with a football while eating hockey pucks.
Let's take a look at just a few examples of Season 8's silliness:
Mark Cornelison/Lexington Herald-Leader/MCT and AFP/Getty Images
It's been a
discouraging week here on my intertubes blog, so I wanted to take my mind off the pressing issues of the day to ask a very intriguing, very thought-provoking question that I came up with while drinking beer and watching football with my friends.
In the interest of full disclosure, I only came up with half the idea, while my friend Brian added the key component that will truly vault us both into the same league as other great thinkers, from Plato to other guys and gals who thought about stuff.
This question touches on the fundamental roots of our society, of our existence as animals thrust from the bosom of nature into an uncertain and frightening self-awareness. It is a question of philosophy, of science, of the very core of human nature.
And the question is this:
If you had the choice, would you rather be Indianapolis Colts quarterback Peyton Manning or fugitive Islamic fundamentalist mass murderer Osama Bin Laden?
But--
But!--if you're Peyton Manning then you have to have live with a constant, never-ending case of diarrhea.
Like I said yesterday, last week might have been one of the worst in modern American history.
As with many people
who follow and enjoy democracy, I was blown to bits by the Supreme Court ruling last week where five justices overturned 100 years of precedent to end the ban on corporations directly spending money on political campaigns.
People have not yet grasped the far-reaching and terrifying ramifications of this. Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission is basically the 9/11 of government corruption: It has opened the floodgates to a new, frightening era.
This ruling essentially opens the door for any corporation (and unions--
big whoop), from Big Oil to Big Food to Big Health Insurance to spend as much money as possible defeating candidates who oppose their profits in the name of silly things like "the public good." It's not just corporations either: countries like China could very easily foot the bill to pick and choose candidates that will have policies beneficial to their interests. Hell,
even al-Qaeda could set up a multi-national corporation and start funding their preferred candidates.
It will only take a couple of examples of candidates getting hosed and losing their seats before most all of them will be (even more) afraid to get on the bad side of whatever company is protecting its interests. Environmental concerns getting in the way of mountaintop blasting? All a coal company has to do is outspend the congressman voicing those concerns.
We are in for a halcyon era of unbridled political corruption.
Two things happened last week that may make it one of the worst in modern American history. We will tackle one today and one tomorrow.
First, with the election of Scott "
Someone Stick It to My Daughters" Brown in Massachusetts, it appears as if health care reform might be mortally wounded. This is really, really bad.
Paul Krugman writes eloquently in The New York Times about
why failure is not an option, but let me try to explain it with asterisked-out cuss words included.
The health care bills passed by the House and Senate
are not the frightening, overreaching government takeovers that Fox News and the Republican Party would have you believe. Backed by the insurance industry and the political motivation to see Obama and Democrats fail at any cost, these entities have hoodwinked Americans into believing the proposed reform is radical, but I can assure you, it is not.
It is the most basic, innocuous reform imaginable, and we really, really, really are going to regret it if the Democrats in the House or a few Republicans in the Senate don't demonstrate some courage and pass some version of the current plans.
