Phase One Complete: SetLasers to "Mildly Disinteresting"

The title of this post doesn't make sense, but only because it would have been odd for me to say "set lasers to stun" as the video isn't stunning. Still, considering how much I hate Macs and had to use iMovie, it could have been worse. Much worse.

Stewart v. Colbert: Why the Controversy?

I know I am posting a great deal of blogs. I apologize, but I kind of got behind and am making up for lost time. I know you have all been anxious for updates (and even if you haven't, a white lie never hurt anyone!).

Okay, so there are two major comic news shows on Comedy Central right now. They are called The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report. There is, despite the friendliness between these two hosts, much controversy and even animosity over which show is better than the other.

Some, such as correspondent Casey Rock, prefer The Daily Show. Jon Stewart's comedic routines and hilarious commentary on important news items. Casey did go on to note, though, that an irritating fact about Jon Stewart is that he wrote a somewhat disparaging book about America (Called America (The Book): A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction, published in 2004). This is interesting to note, as many rather enjoyed the book, but is also rather irrelevant to this post. So I won't speak further on it.

I personally like The Daily Show because, well, it's a classic. I have watched it for several years, and Jon Stewart is a very funny man. I would have his babies, except that I tend to lack of a uterus and he's already married to Tracy McShane and has 2 children. His commentaries on the war in Iraq as well as his current commentary about the presidential elections keep me laughing and begging for more.

On the other hand, Stephen Colbert, who began on The Daily Show, is also a rather funny man. He is a pseudo-uber-conservative who's daily guests on the show cause me intense happiness and an inexplicable sense of fulfillment. Chris Teel, another corespondent, prefers The Colbert Report (pronounced "Col-bear Re-pore") to The Daily Show. I cannot argue that Stephen Colbert is fantastically funny. He portrays himself as intense, but this is evidently not so. His dry, satirical humor is enough to sustain a small nation. Chris Teel is actually such a fan that he knows off-hand where Colbert was born (South Carolina). That impressed me.

In any event, both of these shows are on friendly terms and at the end of each Daily Show episode "hands off the baton" to The Colbert Report. Stewart and Colbert get along, so now I think it is time for the fans to reconcile their differences and make friends. Embrace both shows, I say. If you choose to embrace one show more than the other, that's alright. But both are definitely well worth watching.



Let's just get along ;)

Bringing Burgundy Back, or Ron's Return

I am fairly certain that everyone everywhere has seen Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy. If they haven't, I am not sure why. I mean, obviously developing countries won't have watching this smashing comedy as a goal, but anyone else ought to have seen it! It is, in my opinion, the best comedy released within the last 5 years. Will Ferrel, playing Ron Burgundy, a very popular San Diego news anchor, causes me to rock with mirth every time I watch that movie. His over-the-top acting style usually makes me slightly ill, as in Old School, but definitely does the trick in this film.

As awesome as that film was, though, I am not actually campaigning for it tonight. It does that for itself. I am actually concerned for the Anchroman legacy. There are plans in action for the production of an Anchorman sequel, due to begin production in just a few years. Generally, sequels suck. If you don't believe me, watch Scary Movie or Mulan (or any other Disney movie, really. Toy Story II? C'mon...). So, in light of the fact that Anchorman was such a smashing movie, I am afraid that if I watch a sequel, I will be turned off on both of the movies.

I don't want that. At all. It would make me sad. In a bad way (as opposed to the good way?) I say no to another Anchorman movie. I know that even if it isn't as good as the original, it could still be phenominal (half of infinitely funny is still infinitely funny, but more finitely so. That doesn't make sense? Too bad.). Even with that knowledge, I don't want thissequel to sully the pristine name of Anchorman. I will watch the sequel, have no doubt. But I had better not be forced to regret it.

As an aside, the production of the sequel was announced on May 5, 2008 (my birthday, just so you know. It's also Karl Marx's birthday). How do I know that? Wikipedia!

By the way, I found this image today. I find it hilarious. I hope you do too.



You don't find it funny? Get out. Just kidding. But no, seriously. Leave. If you want. Now.

Live From New York....!

I watched Saturday Night Live on, you guessed it, Saturday night (into Sunday morning, but who really cares about such pedantic distinctions?) and I must say that, even as a long-term fan of Will Ferrel with his voice immodulation as a news reporter, I must say that I absolutely love the Judy Grimes skits.

Judy Grimes is a very nervous reporter who is terrified when on the news and responds to everything that she says with "just kidding" and then launches into another lie. Over the course of the skit, these rapid lies become hysterical. No one that I have shown the video to has avoided laughing for the entire segment. And I mean laughing and not your average giggle, chuckle or even guffaw.

Reproduced below is the skit. We have it courtesy of hulu.com.



I find the video very hilarious and have probably watched it ten times. The speed with which she thinks of her lines is remarkable, and the amount of stuttering or mumbling is minimal.

It has been presented to me that she wasn't thinking of the lines as she went but had memorized them previously. I don't think this is so. She looks up and to the right in the video, which is considered a standard sign of someone trying to perform creative or inventive thinking, as when they fabricate a story, especially visuals. Information about this can be found on interesting sites such as this one.

Anyway, that about wraps it up for this post! I hope you enjoyed it!

Digital story

This is my digital story about my need for travel and the importance of it. At the beginning of the story I talk about my long time love for natural beauty. Then as the pictures progress my love evolves to more then just natural beauty, it evolves into a need for travel. My ending message is to keep close ties with the people that you already have, but use travel to widen your horizons. Also I want to convey the message, get out in the world as my main theme.

Some Old Friends Never Get Old...Sometimes

What to blog about this week? Well, I posted a great picture of my friend Hallie from high school on Facebook and, of course, tagged her in it. Why wouldn't I? It was an epic picture of her making the most ridiculous face I had ever seen in my life. She has a double-hinged jaw, so her mouth opens really wide. I know what you're thinking. No. It opens even wider that that. She could comfortably chew a watermelon. Whole.

But I digress. Hallie, upon realizing she was tagged in the photo, untagged herself. Facebook, (unfortunately) has the feature that whenever someone is tagged in a photo they are made aware of the photo. That sucks. Some cool features are that when someone has been tagged in a photo, that photo goes into their profile under "Pictures of ______" (the blank is, of course, filled in by that person's name. Well, that made it funny because this picture that everyone except Hallie thought was outrageously funny was in her album. Until she untagged herself.

Sad face.

I tried to re-tag her in the photo, but Facebook would NOT allow me to do so as she had untagged herself previously. That blew. So I took down the picture and reuploaded it. I tagged her again. She untagged herself.

Well, I am no quitter. I was determined to get her good. So I put the picture as my profile picture for a while. Any time I SuperPoke'd anyone, posted on a wall, commented on a status or sent a private message (among thousands of other instances), the picture of Hallie was shown anew. Victory!

But Hallie convinced me to take it down. How? Threat of physical and/or emotional violence (That may or may not be true. I can't remember. Go under the assumption it is true, though).

But now months have passed and, frankly, I had entirely forgotten about the picture until just a few days ago a friend was e-ambling through my pictures and saw it. And commented. And that made my day! The old picture of an old friend, like when it was new, brightened my day (that really didn't need too much brightening, come to think of it). Now there are many messages about the picture. Facebook really does spread joy. MySpace, on the other hand, spreads STDs. Or spreads like one, anyway. But I digress again.

Actually, I don't digress. I finish. But, just for having made your way through this post that, while interesting to me, probably isn't interesting to you, I leave you with a couple of things. First, a request to post a comment including any similar story (if you are so inclined to share) and also a copy of the picture itself, reproduced below in all its splendor, for you to behold.






Oh, I forgot to mention. Hallie doesn't normally look this gross. She was tied for Most Attractive girl in our class. She wasn't expecting that.

The log book

This weekend I went camping on the long trail in the breath taking mountains of Vermont. It was my first experience with the outing club and the wilderness of Vermont. The place that we camped at was a beautiful hut overlooking everything all the way to the Adirondack mountains. In this hut lay a notebook log of all of the hikers/campers that had stayed at the same hut. It was really amazing to read a first person account of the history of the place that we were staying. In one account a women moaned about french Canadians, while in another some one wrote a violent poem about revolution.
In the first log entry I read there was a women that was obviously hiking by herself and stayed a night with a group of eight french Canadian women, that apparently would not stop jabbering in french. The women kept repeating how foreigners get to her, and how she could not stand the consistent jabbering in another language. The part that I really found interesting about this entry was that later in the log the women wrote a p.s. basically about how much French Canadians get to her. I think I enjoyed reading this log entry so much because through the ladies writing I could imagine how she talked, looked, and even her beliefs. The best part about being able to imagine all of those things is that, I knew that this women, that had a strong distaste for French Canadians was really out in the world some where. I am not sure why that is so appealing, because I don't think that I would get along with the women writing but I like to imagine her through the writing. Also acknowledging that I have slept in the same place as her.
The second entry that was extremely interesting was an entry in which someone wrote a poem involving Molotov cock tails made from nalgene water bottles, some how relating to some sort of revolution. This article left so much room for the imagination to wander. I could either go about dissecting this article in a cynical way, by thinking the poem is just silly and disregarding the weird content. Or I could dissect the poem and truly imagine what this person was like. So I took the second method and imagined a whole story about the deranged person that wrote the poem(even though the person was most likely not deranged).
Finally I do not why I felt that these a accounts of different people were so interesting. Maybe it is because I was just board in the woods and was letting my imagination wander. Or may it was because I really did like reading the history of the 1930's hut that I was staying in. Either way if you ever go camping and stay in some sort of shelter I recommend reading the log book.