Showing posts with label not sports. Show all posts
Showing posts with label not sports. Show all posts
Join YCS in celebrating Earth Day
>> Tuesday
Every once in a while, we like to use this blog to do something socially responsible. With today being Earth Day, as a show of solidarity for the people of Earth, we are lending our support to the environmentalist cause the best way we know how.
That's right--For today, all of our posts will be written in....
GREEN TEXT!
By writing our posts in green text, we believe we can raise awareness of important global environmental issues among America's youth, who so often come here for spiritual guidance.
We also encourage all of you to observe Earth Day by practicing resource conservation--not only throughout today but every day of the year. You can start by turning off your computer once you've finished reading this post and re-reading our entire archives. You see, in the time it took you to read that last sentence, you created another 60,000 tonnes of carbon emissions and killed four trees. That sentence? Another five trees. They're adding up fast, dude. Better turn off your computer and get outside and start planting.
Some other suggestions for conserving resources:
-Instead of driving home from work or school, take your bike or hail a rickshaw.
-Opt for tap water over bottled water. For best results, put your mouth directly around the faucet to avoid the risk of spillage.
-Go to your nearest beverage vending machine, purchase its entire contents, empty each bottle into the sink, and recycle the empties. This way, you know they'll all be recycled, and absolutely nothing gets wasted.
-Don't just throw away your trash until you've explored all ways in which it can be used for biofuel. Objects like disposable silverware and broken rubberbands can be used to craft a small turbine that you can operate with an uncontrolled burn of the combustible trash, which can be used to power your electric toothbrush.
And remember, kids: Some things, like the well-being of our planet, are more important than sports. And that's why we at YCS always take these matters very, very seriously.
More YouTube filler
>> Friday
Like most of our YouTube filler, this only vaguely relates to sports. But for you Conan O'Brien fans who haven't had the chance to watch him in the last week, or who have abandoned him since the WGA strike started, you've missed out on this brilliant gag--Super Bowl-predicting turtle races... with rockets!
And by the way, if you are one of those people who have not been tuning in since Conan came back on the air writer-less, you are missing out. Granted, the shows aren't quite as full or crisp as with writers, but the absolute lack of regard for whether the gags are too silly or frivilous makes for comedy gold. And it proves to me that Conan O'Brien is funnier by himself than Letterman, Leno, and Stewart are with writers (that is, until he takes over the 10:35 slot next year and is forced to do Leno-style humor. So enjoy the 11:35 show while you can.)
The fourth "major" U.S. sport: A huuuuuge can o' worms
>> Tuesday
Four major sports:
1. Football
2. Baseball
3. Basketball
4. Politics
So let's all debate politics! (Not a good idea!)
My two cents:
-Happy about the sudden McCain momentum.
-Think I could use (and therefore, America could use) a tough matron like Ms. Clinton to lead us proper.
-Obama is.... THE CULT OF PERSON-AL-ITY.
Discuss. (Or better yet, disregard.)
(And also, a certain buzz word in this campaign reminds me of.... something.)
Read more...
A recurring segment
After all, why take the effort to write about sports when you can just copy and paste a hilarious, presumably algorithm-generated spam email? This one landed in our inbox yesterday:
HI WITH MY REGARDS TO YOU AND THE COMPANY WELL MY NAME IS SCOTT WILLSON AND I WILL LIKE TO ORDER FIGHTING CHAIRS AND I WILL LIKE TO KNOW THE PRICE FOR EACH FIGHTING CHAIRS THAT YOU HAVE AND THE FORM OF PAYMENT THAT YOU ACCEPT AND GET BACK TO ME THANK YOU
Scott Willson
Sales Service Manager
scottwillsonpc@yahoo.com
COMPANY::Drumsco Lmt , Inc.
tel:775-317-7787
tool free :1-877-225-5928
fax :773-733-0396
Call me crazy, but I'm not sure I trust a business that keeps their phone in Nevada and their fax machine in Chicago. What do you say we bombard Mr. Will-son with so much spam that it crashes the server over at Drumsco Lmt ("laminated"? "lamented"?), Inc.?
Yeah, because that's the only place where people still like you
>> Monday
If you missed it, Craig Sager was just interviewing Jon Bon Jovi, who revealed that Bon Jovi will be opening their next tour with ten straight dates in New Jersey. Um, yeah, like the post title says.
Also, Jon really knows his baseball. He should quit music and go into broadcasting. Just kidding. But he should still quit music.
Once Again Proving Why We're the Greatest Country in the World
>> Thursday
America: a country so breathtakingly free that even our astronauts are allowed to get totally blasted on the job. This story is pure brilliance. If you're too lazy to click on the link, here's the headline and sub-head:
Drunken astronauts reportedly allowed to fly
Independent panel cites ‘heavy use of alcohol’ before launch, sources say
Independent panel cites ‘heavy use of alcohol’ before launch, sources say
"So, let me get this straight. You're going to strap me on top of tons of combustible fuel and shoot me off into space in some contraption built by whoever was willing to do it for the least amount of money? All right, fine, but I'm gonna need to get totally plowed first."
Coming next week in part two of this report:
Drunken astronauts reportedly wake up to find "hot" Russian companion on international space station much less hot than previously believed
Read more...
This Post Has Nothing To Do With Sports
>> Tuesday
IMDb is one of my favorite sites on the net because, in addition to being a huge nerd when it comes to sports, I'm a huge nerd when it comes to movies. And tv. And random trivia. Ok, fine, I'm a nerd for most things you can be a nerd about.
Anyway, IMDb has a feature on their site where it says something to the effect of "If you like this movie/show, you'll also like..." and lists similar shows/movies/harlequin romance novels (what?).
On the IMDb page for the greatest new show on tv, aka "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia," one of the listings is for the movie "Sister Act." I'm not kidding.
I find this hilarious.
Also, for the show "Will & Grace," it says, "If you like this show, you'll also like:"
some dick.
Just kidding. But the first one's true.
Ridiculous. E-S-P-N. Ridiculous.
>> Thursday
However, my annual odometer turning over has instead taken a back seat to the broadcast of the National Spelling Bee on the Walt Disney family of networks tonight...on ABC, so that ESPN and ESPN2 can showcase College Softball and World Series of Poker action. This infuriates me as lord knows I was looking forward to some Ugly Betty. However, I could probably turn on the softball game and get the same effect.
Even more of a shame sadly, is that short of one of the Korean home-schooled kids shaming his family and commiting suicide on stage, there's no way this annual reading of the dictionary is going to provide anything more newsworthy as when that one kid passed out on stage , and had to use a stool for the rest of the competition, because a Spelling Bee was just too physically taxing for him.
Reznor for three... YES!!!!
>> Sunday
The wellspring has been going like a firehose lately, espcially with baseball season starting, but I did want to follow up as promised on my last post about local alternative station Q101's March Music Madness.
First off, I wanna thank Q101 DJ Electra for linking the previous post on her own blog. Finding out we have readers whom we don't personally know--especially ones in actual media-type places--is always both a shock and a joy, so thank you for reading. By the way, if "O" comes up in the Last-Letter Game tomorrow (Chicago talk--sorry, everyone else), I think you should play "One Shining Moment," as it would only be apt.
So after I bitched and moaned about A Perfect Circle--oops, "A.P.C."--making it through the first round, they went and made the Final Four. Well, I wasn't happy when Wisconsin overachieved their way to the Final Four in 2000, but I guess I lived through that one, so I should be okay.
Other than that, I'll keep further commentary to a minimum. But I must say, I'm perplexed by the results in that I can't pin down a consistent pattern among the winners. I'm fairly convinced it had everything to do with the time of day and week when the matchups took place and who tunes in at those times. I also wonder how strongly the voting results correlate to employment. You hear that A.P.C. fans? Go get jobs!
Anyway, here's the final bracket, with Nine Inch Nails the big winner:
One shining moment, you reached for the sky...
Read more...Coldplay=Duke, The Fray=Holy Corss, Local H=Arkansas, James van Osdel=Billy Packer
>> Thursday
WARNING: Not about sports
So Chicago's local alternative music station Q101 (you may remember them from our ill-fated campaign to take sports guy Jim Lynam's job) is currently running a feature called "March Music Madness." You can probably guess how it works. Basically, the station picked 64 popular alternative music acts--both current and classic--and randomly jumbled them throughout an NCAA Tournament-style bracket.
During each "game," a couple songs by each of the two artists are played alternately, at which time listeners can text message their vote as to which artist should advance. It's a pretty good gimmick. Listeners get to hear a good assortment of favorite artists while the station generates incentive for listeners to stay tuned. And since no paticular voting criteria are imposed, it's a pure "choice of the people" affair, and therefore, a "wrong" choice is virtually impossible.
Seems pretty fun and harmless, right? I mean, it would take a total low-life, no-life asshole to quibble with the artist selection or the voting results of an exercise created to gauge simple preference on a topic so benign.
Well, ladies and gentlemen--I am that asshole. Below is the bracket after round one. (Click to enlarge.)
Staind defeats Oasis. I have a good friend who would start hemorraging from every orafice on his body if he saw this result. Now, I'm no British teenager ca. 1996, so I don't believe Oasis was/is the second-coming of the Beatles. But Staind?!?! They are painfully generic and utterly devoid of imagination or musical skill of any sort. Oasis, on the other hand, has put out a nuber of good albums--including one just last year--and a certifiable classic in "What's the Story, Morning Glory."I can only guess some dumbshit devoted Staind fan texted 9,384 times in five minutes; otherwise, this result would have never happened.
Fall Out Boy defeats the Clash. Again--do people have no sense of history or proportion? You aren't known as "the only band that matters" (Granted, it was a self-given title, but it stuck, didn't it?) by being less good than Fallout Boy. Jesus. Fallout Boy is a couple hits, generic style, single genre. The Clash were groundbreaking, meaningful, tons of genres...Ugh! Do I even need to justify this? Friggin' Fallout Boy...you've gotta be kidding me.
Local H defeats Linkin Park. Color me not a Linkin Park fan, so I have no beef with them losing in the first round. But come on--if this station were in any other city, does the name Local H ever even come up? Expand this thing to 256 artists, and I still say no. This is Arkansas to the 4/3 power. If not for local cronies on the selection committee, this one-hit wonder from 1997 is in the D-III March Music Madness. Does "Bound for the Floor" even get airplay outside Chicago? I'd really like to know. Let's not even mention--even though I know this is a shitty criterion to judge a song by--that one "hit" was literally like a single repeating chord and a two-note chorus. I can't believe it's even held up.
311 defeats Coldplay. This could have been almost anyone (well, maybe except for Staind) and I would have been thrilled by this outcome. I won't get too much into it, but I have kind of an ill-conceived disdain for Coldplay. As far as I'm concerned, this is VCU over Duke. Self-important, overhyped powerhouse bites the dust! Oh, and although I don't love them, I do think 311 is pretty cool, so I can dig this result on all counts.
A Perfect Circle defeats the Fray. Umm... Shouldn't this have been the play-in game? ...for the March Music NIT Madness? Why are either of these bands included? And more so, why did they face each other first round? Seriously, this is like pairing Holy Cross and Texas A&M-Corpus Christi. I'd say I know a pretty good deal about music. System of a Down, Queens of the Stone Age, Rage Against the Machine--I hadn't the slightest problem picking up on those abbreviations immediately when I saw them. But I had to google "A.P.C." to even know who the fuck they were. We should not be asked to familiarize ourselves with an abbreviation for a band so lame.
Incubus defeats R.E.M. God must have a real sick sense of humor. People who voted this are allowed to hear while Beethoven was not. I mean, come on. Incubus is alright and all, and I'm sure they have a pretty great following or live act or whatver. But it's R. freaking E. fucking M. Ignorant masses! I'm sure most of the people who voted this way will probably say "Losing My Religion" was their first hit. No, you hypothetical stupid clowns! They were around for ten years by then. Sorry--I stowed my music pretentiousness away pretty well until now, but I couldn't let that go.
The Smashing Pumpkins defeat the White Stripes. Holy ridiculousness. You pair the Fray and A.P.C. (as I will coolly refer to them now that I know), and then you pair these two juggernauts in the first round? Worse off, you give the White Stripes, one of the best alternative acts of our generation, absolutely no shot. Remember--this is a Chicago station, and you're pitting them against one of the Chicago area's alltime most popular bands. This would be like sending UCLA to the Verizon Center in D.C. to play Georgetown in the first round, laying down the Wizards floor and calling it a "neutral site." Hold this March Music Madness matchup in Detroit, and you get a 90-10 landslide.
Ramones defeat the Flaming Lips. See above, minus the local bias and less egregious. But still egregious.
Alright, I guess that's enough for round one. I'll probably pick this up again when it's in the championship or over, so you know how it turns out and what else upset me.
(Oh, and by the way, you'd have to be from Chicago and a Q101 listener to know who James van Osdol is. Don't feel dumb for not knowing.)
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