Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Hunter in Glorious Technicolor

Over the past week, I've been told six times that that they saw me on TV. Since it's been a few weeks since my last caper, I know it couldn't have been Cops. So I looked up MTTV's schedule and, sure enough, my game show is now airing.

Did I mention that earlier? I filmed a game show last semester. It was eight episodes long and I was the host. It was an insane quiz show, like Family Feud but without any standards. The questions are an interesting blend of obvious questions ("Who wanted to see the money in Jerry Maguire?"), impossible ("What in God's name is a legume?"), and well written ("What is the inspiration for the names Calvin and Hobbes?").

The answers are Tom Cruise, a peanut, and Enlightenment era philosophers. But I digress.

If you want to see arguably the greatest hosting of a game show ever (in addition to my bizarre interpretation of what constitutes a dance), then you should tune in to MTTV (Channel 10 in the Rutherford county region) Tuesdays and Thursdays and Saturdays at 8:00 PM Central Time and Friday at 6:30 PM. There are also times at 1:30 AM on Tuesday (Monday night), Thursday (Wednesday Night) and Saturday (Friday). Just in case you watch more traditional networks for entertainment (Face Off > The Office, just consider the number of Hunters employed by both. There's an undeniable advantage to Face Off. But I digress with a digression. Double points! Yeah, I have a points system for every time I digress. I haven't written a post until I've gotten at least 50 digression points. Wow, this is a digression within a digression within a digression. That's gotta be at least septuple points.)

Anyways, the point of that entire paragraph is that, evidently, septuple is a real word. Score one for Latin roots!

Moving on, if you happen to be in the Murfreesboro region and don't have plans on Wednesday night, good news! You have plans now. At 9 PM, I will be giving a lecture in the Corlew Hall lobby about how to survive the Zombie Apocalypse. Then we will watch Shaun of the Dead. Finally, all those hours of Dead Rising and Left 4 Dead pay off! Also, I can promise you that the following phrase will be uttered "proletariat zombie". Come by Corlew and find out what possible context there could be!

Thursday, February 12, 2009

No Broad Unifying Theme

No, today you get two small vaguely related themes largely inspired by Facebook chats I've had today.

First and foremost, I have big plans for tomorrow. I can't divulge the precise nature of these plans because that would be unlucky (also, I suspect Matt is a saboteur). However, for good luck, I've devised the following ritual:

  • Open an umbrella indoors while standing beneath a ladder.
  • Lob a black cat into a mirror, shattering it.
  • Have the mirror shards knock over a bottle of salt.
Madness? THIS. IS. HUNTER!

It's my broader strategy known only as the Three Stooges Effect. I believe that there are limited avenues for bad luck, like a doorway to a building. Most people with bad luck invoke it slowly and the bad luck can enter their doorway in a neat and orderly fashion. But by invoking as much bad luck as possible, all of the bad luck gets stuck as they try to enter the door at the same time. Thus, no bad luck at all.

Now, when President Obama is constantly mentioning how this is the "worst financial crisis since the Great Depression", I am easily tempted to mock him. After all, he was supposed to be all about the politics of "hope". But then I thought about the real politics of fear. Here is a sample:
This is the worst financial crisis in history. Every day when I wake up, I consider myself fortunate to find the masses are not hunting each other down in a cannibalistic orgy of poverty.




Aside from both topics occurring in facebook chat, I'm afraid I have no unifying conclusion.

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Super Bowl, Steroids, and Sass

First of all, I got 3 out of 5 Super Bowl predictions right. That's 60 percent, a simply horrible number if I were taking a test. So now you know why I didn't sign up for Super Bowl Predictions 2030. That and the course syllabus was really thin after the first few weeks.

Next, let me add GO STEELERS!!!! WORLD CHAMPIONS!!!!! It is fitting that Santonio Holmes won the Super Bowl MVP, because he never did anything for the Hunterian Velociraptors.

Yeah, that's right. Hunteria has a fantasy football team. Better yet, Hunteria has a CHAMPIONSHIP FOOTBALL TEAM. A championship I won back in December and am only now mentioning on my blog, but a championship nonetheless. I suppose there's a reason why I should update more often. The championship was won by me through sheer determination and yelling at the tv during the game. In the title game, I was squared off against my good friend Sam, who is equally overzealous. It came down to the last play of the last game of the Fantasy Football season. I'll spare my literally dozens of readers the intricacies of Fantasy Football, but if the Green Bay kicker made a field goal as time expired, I would lose the championship. but the Chicago Bears, motivated by my "wanting-it-more", nobly swatted the ball down and won me the coveted Tune Cup. As Bean (who is supposed to update this blog for me to keep you entertained, but he lost his password and never bothered with the simple password recovery system) can confirm, my cheers of "YES! YES!" could be heard across the neighborhood.

But I digress. I really, horribly digress.

The Super Bowl was a great game. I have never been happier to have been wrong. Great game from start to finish. If it weren't for an incredible run back by James Harrison at the end of the First Half, the Cardinals would have won that game. As it is, I will reluctantly celebrate my Steelers winning anyways. STEELERS!

The ads were very disappointing. The only one that sticks with me is the one second High Life commercial, which speaks poorly of the other commercials quality. The new animated movie "Monster and Aliens" looks like it'll be a dozen different kinds of bad, with its sole redeeming quality being that Stephen Colbert voices the President.

In surprisingly unsurprising news, Alex Rodriguez admitted to using steroids. I say unsurprising because most of the big sluggers from 1997-2003 were on steroids (except Sammy Sosa, he was on steroids AND corked his bat). I say surprising because A-Rod actually admitted to the report. I guess every other possible excuse has been given before and failed in the court of public opinion. From a business standpoint, it was worth it. Sure, he may have disgraced the game and ruined his integrity, but he got over $550 million guaranteed in contracts, plus countless (read: I don't have time to look it up) money from endorsements by being "the best player in baseball". From a legacy standpoint, I think A-Rod is no longer a great player. He's always been a choking dog in big games (he'll be 5-5 with 6 RBIs when you're winning 12-2, but he'll be 0-5 when you're down 2-1 or in the playoffs). And now his phenomenal success in non-clutch games is tainted by steroids. About the only defense for him is "He wasn't the only one on steroids, but he's the only one to reach 500 HRs the fastest". That only enhances the disappointment. He could've been great without cheating.

On lighter subjects, I am going to wholeheartedly recommend Dinosaur Comics. It's a comic that is way too infeasible to be printed in any sort of newspaper, so it finds refuge in the Internet Badlands, where there is no concept of quality control. The gimmick to this comic is that the "art" never changes. Every comic is the same clip art of a T-Rex talking to a Dromicieomimus and a Utahraptor. But what really shines is the writing and the frequency of the comic. The comic updates Monday through Friday, as opposed to most internet comics which only update 3 times a week (or this blog, which updates at increasingly random intervals). Occasionally, the comic will be too wordy and confusing for its own good. But the bright side is you can skip it with impunity and go on to funnier comics. Also, how can you not love a comic where the main character is a sassy Tyrannosaurus?

Speaking of funnier, I feel that I'm not in a particularly funny mood, so I will leave you with my thoughts and digressions which vaguely resemble thought.

P.S. Leave comments, they're the lifeblood of the blogging industry.

Sunday, February 1, 2009

Super Sunday

It's hard to believe I started this blog over a year ago. It's even harder to believe that I still have readers with my erratic updates.

Anyways, a few of my thoughts on the Super Bowl

  1. It won't live up to expectations. It's supposed to be an epic battle of the Unstoppable Force vs the Immovable Object. Except that whenever the Unstoppable Force meets the Immovable Object, one will buckle early and be unable to adapt. Then the route ensues.
  2. I think that the commercials will have 4/5 stars this year. I haven't read anything about them. Just call it a hunch.
  3. I think Whisenhunt (the Cardinals' Coach) is eleven different kinds of awesome. It's a shame that the Steelers franchise is a dozen different kinds of awesome. I predict the Steelers win.
  4. For the first time in about five years, there is no villain in this Super Bowl. Last year, we had the Nefarious Patriots. Before that, we had the Vile Bears. But even if my beloved Steelers don't triumph, it'll be cool to see the Arizona Cardinals no longer be synonymous with "Horrible Failure".
  5. Even though I am scheduled to work at the Tutoring Center, I'll be in the lobby watching the game.
Enjoy the game!