In Case You Missed It

I say a lot of dumb things. Maybe years from now, psychologists can look at some of the things I've said, and conclude, "...well, there's your problem!". On the other hand, maybe future generations will study my writings and build a new society from the rubble of the old one, (and God help us all if this happens).

Most of my comments are posted as short silly Facebook Status Updates. Sometimes the world annoys and frustrates me, or sometimes I'm just making a nerd-inspired observation about the world around me. In the end, I always hope that I can make someone agree, or at the very least smile just a bit.

And please don't think this is a form of narcissism, or arrogance! One of the main reasons I'm doing this, is so I don't accidentally start repeating myself. But if you do find something you particularly enjoy, and want to use, I only ask that you give me credit, (cause I'm not making any money from this! But if you should feel so inclined...).

So it is with great pride, and shame I have logged a general digest of stupidity for you, in what I like to call:

In Case You Missed It

The next time you feel down and depressed, remember that someone somewhere in the world, touched themselves sexually thinking about you...
June 23, 2009 at 9:25pm

My entire life consists of never ending dorky useless projects I create for myself. Is that inspiring, or disturbing?
June 28, 2009 at 12:50pm

Maybe one day, I'll be as cool as my glasses
July 4, 2009 at 3:31am

WHY are fireworks the same as they were 30 years ago?!? I want NEW Firework technology dammit!!
July 4, 2009 at 9:40pm

I like to think everyone dislikes me. It makes me try harder to impress, and I'm never upset when I discover I'm right. And imagine how happy and surprised I am to learn someone DOES like me!
July 9, 2009 at 3:03am ·

Should I be concerned or happy if my mono mix sounded stereo tonight?
July 10, 2009 at 2:52am

I totally rule... whenever I'm not busy sucking
July 11, 2009 at 8:50am

Does everyone else want to smash their car repeatedly into the bumper of a car with a 'Baby on Board' sign, or is it just me?
July 13, 2009 at 1:40am

Always wondered what Jimi Hendrix, Pink Floyd, The Doors, Stevie Ray Vaughn etc would have sounded like without all the drugs and alcohol...
July 21, 2009 at 12:04pm

I'm always concerned about leaving fingernail clippings or strands of hair laying around cause I KNOW someone will use them to clone me and then I'm screwed! Yes, this is what its like living in my head...
August 13, 2009 at 7:53pm

Bad news - Turns out I'm not nearly as cool as everyone thinks. Heartbreaking as it may be for you, please try to continue like nothing has changed...
August 14, 2009 at 9:57pm

Things always seem a bit funnier by adding 'again' at the end of it. For example: "the town is being over-run by zombies... again" Or: "I accidentally killed one of those hookers... again"
August 24, 2009 at 1:02pm

I played tech support for my dad's computer problems tonight. He said he has Windows XP Professional version. I explained this was too much for him, and he needed to get Windows XP Idiots version. I am now up for adoption...
August 28, 2009 at 4:34am

Back to the eye doctor again today. Maybe soon I will be able to see all you people... and run fleeing in terror
September 1, 2009 at 12:16pm

Oh why am I cursed with having so many good looking sexy attractive friends??? Especially you!
September 12, 2009 at 10:40am

If you're a guy and your boobs are big enough to fill a bra, KEEP YOUR SHIRT ON PLEASE!!!
September 14, 2009 at 5:54pm

You think I'm a nerd??? Have you met some of my friends here? I'm an amateur!!
September 16, 2009 at 1:46pm

The best thing to happen to Chris Brown is Kanye West
September 16, 2009 at 9:51pm

Today I learned the economy sucks. Why hasn't someone warned me about this??? Someone should tell news broadcasters!
September 17, 2009 at 5:43pm

I don't need drugs or alcohol... I feel drunk and stoned all the time naturally.
September 30, 2009 at 3:01pm

I've been trying to be a sound engineer long enough. Its time for me to quit and just walk the earth, looking for adventures and solving mysteries. Who do I send the resume to for that?
October 2, 2009 at 12:56pm

Finding a needle in a haystack is easy... dive in, roll around and wait for it to poke you in the ass.
October 4, 2009 at 9:42am

Does anyone else think when they see a guy wearing really baggy pants, it looks like a dress? Someone should maybe tell them...
October 6, 2009 at 6:46pm

I remember when I had thousands of people cheering for me. Those were the days...
October 9, 2009 at 7:42pm

Today, I was convinced I was losing my grasp of reality. Then I wondered, did I ever really have a firm grasp of it to begin with?
October 10, 2009 at 3:41pm

Why yes, I do know why the chicken crossed the road. But legally I am not permitted to disclose that information at this juncture. Please fill out the proper Chicken Crossing Query forms or contact your nearest Poultry Motivation Official.
October 11, 2009 at 1:42pm

Indiana's state bird is the cardinal. I never saw one there, but in Florida, I see one almost daily. Do they know something we don't? And why do we have state birds?? Why not state dogs? State cats? State lizards? State spiders??
October 12, 2009 at 4:41pm

Why aren't there any cover versions of 'Happy Birthday' recorded? I would love to hear it with like a kick ass guitar or drum solo, or like a trippy DJ remix maybe...
October 15, 2009 at 11:46pm

The weather is changing. I know because my foot really hurts where I had my surgery last year. Either that, or the stuff he filled the bone with has decided to tunnel its way out...
October 16, 2009 at 10:53pm

I've turned my brain off for the entire weekend, so if there's something you need, sdflkasj;an,n.zxo mas,xc,l lk,,op o,.q.
October 17, 2009 at 9:40pm

My success and failure recently seems to depend greatly on how my hair looks, (sorry bald guys, short haired guys and fuzzy headed guys... you can't understand my pain)
October 19, 2009 at 5:38pm

I am convinced that whenever I lose something trivial, its people from the future coming back to steal small unimportant items from me to showcase in a classroom or a museum. "...And Deeesher often used this 'cap' on what we believe is called a PEN. We can only guess what these 'pens' were used for..."
October 21, 2009 at 8:13am

If I accidentally swipe my credit card at the guard gate, will they charge me to work here?
October 26, 2009 at 5:32pm

Okay, seriously... you're a woman and you walk around with a thick mustache... WHY are you not doing something about this?!?
October 27, 2009 at 1:31am

Someone seriously needs to consolidate all these vampire stories/movies/TV series into one, cause I can't keep track of all the vampire rules and character backgrounds. Maybe we can at least narrow it down to two, one sappy and romantic for the girls, one kick ass and sexy for the guys. Can the government regulate this please???
October 28, 2009 at 9:54am

Just saw Waldo driving west on I-4 in a Taurus. Weird cause I would think he would be driving in a luxury car by now if not even in a limo...
October 30, 2009 at 5:53pm

I hate the word 'pre-owned'. Since nobody likes the word 'used' either, maybe there is another choice. Unwanted? Unloved? I could sell a thousand cars right now if I market them as Unwanted and Unloved....
November 6, 2009 at 10:48am

Tonite, Billy Ocean finally came out of my dreams... and into my venue.
November 7, 2009 at 2:45am

I wanna be a douchebag too... everyone else is doing it!
November 19, 2009 at 11:18am

What the hell are you people staring at! This is perfectly natural....
November 20, 2009 at 11:59am

I feel so disorganized. Send in the clones!
November 23, 2009 at 3:09pm

Virtually everything we own is becoming virtual...
November 24, 2009 at 11:17am

Its so much easier to write about the world than to deal with it...
November 29, 2009 at 11:06am

But wait, there's more!
To be continued...

Deeesher

Tron Legacy Review

Growing up, I never liked Disney. There... I said it. No, I haven't been brainwashed by Universal, but honestly, fairy tales and pixie dust just aren't my thing. However, occasionally Disney does slap together something impressive and non-animated, such as The Black Hole (1979), Dragonslayer (1980), and more recently The Pirates of the Caribbean series.

There is one particular Disney movie that has always been near and dear to my heart... Tron (1982).

Sure Tron was released years before I was born (as far as you know!), but it's a classic because it told an interesting and original (and fun!) story about what happens inside your computer. It stood out because it was the first movie to use computer effects to tell a story, which obviously spoke to computer geeks around the world.

Now almost thirty years later, we finally have a sequel: Tron Legacy.

Is it compatible with today's OS, or was it as painful as a blue screen of death... In 3-D...?

The story involves young Sam Flynn (Garrett Hedlund), who hasn't seen his father, Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges, and our hero from the first Tron) since he was a little brat. Sam grows up to be a bigger brat, pretty much hating 'the man' and fighting the evil establishment that his father's company has become, until one day he discovers how dangerous it is to click 'yes' on every pop-up on your computer. He accidentally gets transported into The Grid (aka inside the world of computers), and forced to play games to survive.

Fortunately for us, he finds his dad pretty much living as a Zen Monk. Unfortunately for everyone in The Grid, one of Flynn's older programs is seeking to destroy all imperfections... Including Users, (aka all of us).

Okay, it's not a great plot, (didn't we see Star Trek do this storyline once before?), but it's good enough to amuse my feeble brain, and it was nice to see some homage's to the original movie as well, (some more obscure than others). Just don't expect huge surprises or wild plot twists... Remember, this is still Disney folks.

What helps the story move nicely is Jeff Bridges, whether real or CGI, he is still very cool and managed to find the same spirit of the character he created in 1982. Another nice choice was actor Garrett Hedlund. Sure they could have picked Johnny Depp, or Shia Lebouf... But thank God they didn't! It was kinda nice seeing an unknown get a big break, and he was very believable as Kevin Flynn's son.

However the biggest nerdgasm goes to the effects! I reluctantly saw this in 3-D, (and we know how much I looooove that *cough*). But this time it worked! Unlike other 3-D attempts of the past, I could enjoy the action, and still kept things in perspective (pun intended). In your face Avatar!

I have total respect for the effects team, and conceptual artists for doing what they needed to do. They took the original 1982 ideas, and improved, not 're-imagined' them. And huge thumbs up to director Joseph Kosinski for letting me see the action, and feel completely immersed in The Grid, without any painful fast closeups and quick edits, or shadows trying to hide the beautiful world they created. My 125 minutes in the theater flew by!

Let us not forget the soundtrack by Daft Punk, adding the perfect tones to the visuals. In addition to the intense thundering sound effects of the giant Recognizer ships and light cycles, I think my eyes and ears discovered every frequency on the spectrum. I left the theater with the most exciting headache ever!

But... the reason you all hate me, is because somehow with all the surrounding coolness, I still find flaws, (however minor they may be). The movie is known as Tron, but we don't get as much from Tron (Bruce Boxleitner) as I would have liked. Sure he makes some appearances, but somehow I wanted a bit more.

And if I'm really nitpicking... the moment Sam gets zapped into The Grid was a bit anticlimactic for me. It just sort of happened, like an afterthought. As if maybe they spent all their money on other effects, and didn't consider for one moment the transition between our world and theirs should be a bit more momentous.

But what do I know...

I still can't decide between Quorra (Olivia Wilde)

And Gem (Beau Garrett)

And I know what you're thinking, “...Deeesher! Those outfits couldn't possibly be tighter!”. Oh yes... yes, I think they could be.

End of line.
Deeesher

The Fat Man Cometh...

Holy crap, is it that time of year again??? Its like we celebrate Christmas every year or something. Ooops... sorry, I mean "The Holidays", because it seems the "C-Word" has become a dirty word.

If I sound a bit cynical towards "The Holidays", maybe its because I am. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE the concept, its just our follow-through that seems to suck.

But lets look at how many more accidents there are on the roads at this time of year. Or how about the 'holiday cheer' being spread in any of the malls as people frantically push and shove each other for the last remaining PS3, so little eight year old Timmy can play Grand Theft Auto IV, despite the game being rated M, for Mature (18 years and up).

Let's look at all those joyous souls going deeper in debt so they can make someone happy... so they themselves can be miserable for the rest of the year as they continue to get late notices for their credit card bill and eventually have to shut off the cable, *cringe*.

Or how about all the endless feelings of stress and obligation everyone feels to visit the malls, and family and friends and bring them the perfect gift, or prepare the perfect meal. Or the frustration of employees trying to arrange for time off work, or angry demanding customers screaming in their face because they can't give them exactly what they want or need.

How about the incredibly high suicide rate during "The Holidays"? Does that do anything for ya homes?

Despite the fact that Christmas was intended as a Christian holiday to celebrate the birth of Jesus, we as a society have twisted this into something... unnatural. Something called Santa Claus, (...insert dramatic music here). Maybe its because December 25th was originally a Pagan holiday celebrating winter. Is all the evil and negativity in the world simply God's way of saying "...pick another day dumbass"?

Well, I for one do not need a calendar to tell me to do something nice for others.

But maybe it's just me. Perhaps I have a personal grudge against this time of year. A grudge that can be traced back to a single moment in grade school in the small mid-western town I grew up in.

I was in the front of the school bus, sitting with my best friend, Scott. We were in a heated debate over the existence of The Claus. I always knew there was no such thing as Santa. Maybe my parents didn't want to give me a twisted sense of reality. Or maybe I was just smart enough to figure out there is no way in hell its possible... since we had no fireplace for him to use. Or maybe its because I was nosy and had a bad habit of finding my presents before they were wrapped anyway.

While my friend and I endlessly debated, I decided to finish it and pulled out my trump card... ask an adult. In hind-sight, I should have known better than to ask a bus driver... but he was the only one around.

You can imagine the Christmas chill I felt when this obvious Harvard graduate bus driver told my friend and I, there IS a Santa. From that day forth, I swore I would have my revenge...!

For those reading with children, and you have chosen this moment to bring them into the real world... I present the following foray into logic, (which I did NOT write by the way... but I wish I had):

Santa Claus:

An Engineering Analysis

1) No known species of reindeer can fly. BUT there are 300,000 species of living organisms yet to be classified, and while most of these are insects and germs, this does not COMPLETELY rule out flying reindeer which only Santa has ever seen.

2) There are 2 billion children (persons under 18) in the world. BUT since Santa doesn't (appear) to handle the Muslim, Hindu, Jewish and Buddhist children, that reduces the workload to 15% of the total - 378 million according to Population Reference Bureau. At an average (census) rate of 3.5 children per household, that's 91.8 million homes. One presumes there's at least one good child in each.

3) Santa has 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the different time zones and the rotation of the earth, assuming he travels east to west (which seems logical). This works out to 822.6 visits per second. This is to say that for each Christian household with good children, Santa has 1/1000th of a second to park, hop our of the sleigh, jump down the chimney, fill the stockings, distribute the remaining presents under the tree, eat whatever snacks have been left, get back up the chimney, get back into the sleigh an move on to the next house. Assuming that each of these 91.8 million stops are evenly distributed around the earth (which, of course, we know to be false but for the purpose of our calculations we will accept), we are now talking about .78 miles per household, a total trip of 75« million miles, not counting stops to do what most of us must do at least once every 31 hours, plus feeding, etc.

This means that Santa's sleigh is moving at 650 miles per second, 3,000 time the speed of sound. For purposes of comparison, the fastest man-made vehicle on earth, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a poky 27.4 miles per second - a conventional reindeer can run, tops, 15 miles per hour.

4) The payload on the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming that each child gets nothing more than a medium-sized lego set (2 pounds), the sleigh is carrying 321,300 tons, not counting Santa, who is invariably described as overweight. On land, the conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. Even granting the "flying reindeer" (see point 1) could pull TEN TIMES the normal amount, we cannot do the job with eight, or even nine. We need 214,200 reindeer. This increases the payload -not even counting the weight of the sleigh - to 353,430 tons. Again, for comparison - this is four times the weight of the Queen Elizabeth.

5) 353,000 tons travelling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance - this will heat the reindeer up in the same fashion as spacecraft re-entering the earth's atmosphere. The lead pair of reindeer will absorb 14.3 QUINTILLION joules of energy. Per second. Each. In short, they will burst into flame almost instantaneously, exposing the reindeer behind them, and create deafening sonic booms in their wake. The entire reindeer team will be vaporized within 4.26 thousandths of a second. Santa, meanwhile, will be subjected to centrifugal forces 17,500.06 times greater than gravity. A 250-pound Santa (which seems ludicrously slim) would be pinned to the back of his sleigh by 4,315,015 pounds of force.

In conclusion - If Santa ever DID deliver presents on Christmas Eve, he's dead now.

Enjoy your eggnog,
Deeesher

To John, with Love

I'm a 'Beatles person', as opposed to an 'Elvis person', (see Pulp Fiction deleted scene with Uma Thurman and John Travolta for details. In a nutshell, you can like Beatles and Elvis, but you always prefer one over the other). Which is funny, because my parents are Elvis people, but I never really understood why.  He was a performer, and didn't even write his own songs, (but don't try and tell an 'Elvis person' that).

Growing up in an Elvis house, I never got exposed to the Beatles. Of course I knew the classics like Hey Jude, and Let it Be, but I never heard Norwegian Wood, or I am the Walrus until I was over 18. I truly feel, the songs that John and Paul put together are some of the most original, and memorable songs ever written/recorded, and Abbey Road is one of the best albums of all times.

I also believe John Lennon was one of the most fascinating people in history. He was far from perfect, (as his exploits are documented often), but he had a gift, and a vision. Over the years, I have studied the Beatles, and John Lennon, (if you want to know more about John, watch the movie Imagine), and learned a great deal of respect and appreciation for him. That is why the following story is so special to me, even if it may not be true.

When I moved to the Orlando area, from Ft Lauderdale, I began searching for many things, like a decent place to find comic books, because yeah, I'm a bit of a nerd. Since I didn't know the area well, I went to a comic shop that was right around the corner from where I lived. It was a small place, and they didn't have a lot of the comics I collect, but I was desperate for my fix, so I kept going there.

One day, I was in his shop, and I saw on the floor the album Meet The Beatles mixed in with Frampton Comes Alive and Rumours, and other assorted cheese. I commented to the shop owner and asked if he knew what he had just laying on the floor, and he said:

"...yes, are you a fan?"
I said yes, and he said:
"Hold on, I'll show you something."

From the back room, he pulls out the album Imagine and a wool lined wooden cup with glasses in it. He said he got these things from a guy who owed him money, and this was collateral until he could pay him, and here is how that guy originally got them:

Apparently while staying in a hospital, an older man came by and asked if he had an empty bed in his room. The older man was unhappy with his current hospital roommate, so he wanted to change rooms if possible. The guy said sure. A few days later, the older guy gets a visit from John Lennon. John thanked the guy for letting his friend stay in the room, and gave him an autographed album, and the wool cup with the glasses. John said they were an old prescription, so he didn't wear them anymore, and he could have them.

This was what the comic shop owner pulled out from the back room. I looked at the autograph on the album, and I've seen John's autograph on other things, and I guess it looked real, (although I'm no handwriting expert). The interesting thing about the autograph was what it said:

"To Mike, Love John Lennon"

It didn't say to Bob, or Jim, or Bill... it said 'To Mike'. 

Just... wow! I felt as if he had written it to me, (I know it wasn't... but hey, isn't it cool to think it was?)

And then came possibly the single most coolest moment of my life. I pulled out the glasses. They were the same you see in the video for Imagine with the yellow/gold tint and round frames. I carefully put them on, and could feel my hands shaking. I was looking through the eyes of John Lennon! They were a very thick prescription. It hurt to try and see, but as I looked down, I imagined holding a guitar, and standing in front of thousands of people on a stadium tour. I took them off and gently put them back into the wool cup. I think it took a week to wipe the smile from my face.

I don't know if these were really John Lennon's glasses or not. It seems odd that something so significant would be sitting in a small comic shop in the middle of nowhere, and that a man would simply give someone these things as collateral... but remember, the name of the song?

Imagine

Deeesher