NFL Madness!

We're finally here! The penultimate football games where we finally determine who gets to go to the Super Bowl and play a football game in between the commercials. Traditionally, I'd have at least one strong rooting interest in the games, whether because I'm a fan of one of the teams and they therefore are a paragon of football (Steelers, Panthers, or Cardinals) or because I dislike one of the teams and they don't deserve better than perpetual agony in defeat (Cowboys, Patriots, or Eagles). However, this year there are no villains. In fact, all the remaining teams are unusually sympathetic.

Indianapolis Colts- They're the closest thing to a villain left in the playoffs, having won their 2nd championship in franchise history in 2006. A brief history of the Colts reads as follows "Johnny Unitas, 25 years of shame and ignominy, Peyton Manning." Since they're led by America's favorite salesman/quarterback, so it's impossible to begrudge him a second championship (not counting his Double Stuff Racing League championship). On an unrelated note, I suddenly feel compelled to buy lots and lots of Oreos.

New York Jets- Ironically, their only championship came at the expense of the Colts. And now their road back to the Super Bowl involves beating up the Colts. Now, I don't mean to suggest that the Colts are to the Jets as Spinach is to Popeye the Sailor... wait a second, yes I do! But I digress. The Jets haven't won a championship in 40 years and are being led by a bunch of rookies. Maybe I'm biased, but I like the idea of employees fresh out of college thriving in their respective industry.

New Orleans Saints- Interesting fact: Before 2006, the Saints never sold all their tickets in a season. Since 2006, they've sold out all their games every year. Bonus Fact: Drew Brees joined the Saints in 2006. Conclusion: Drew Brees earned his paycheck. New Orleans has never been to a Super Bowl and this is only their second conference championship game ever. I could go on about how even the great Drew Brees is a lovable misfit, but I'm running out of time before kick off.

Minnesota Vikings- The Vikings are arguably my favorite team that I never actually root for. I don't have any reason to like that region of the country, but Minnesota has two huge advantages. One, they're the only major sports team named the Vikings that I know of, and I freakin' love Vikings. Two, they wear purple, my favorite color that I have no excuse to ever wear under any circumstance. Three, the last two powerhouse forces to wear purple into battle were the Utah Jazz (my favorite basketball team, on account of the amount of dinosaurs found in Utah) and the Roman Senate (my favorite ancient government). But I digress. The Vikings also have never won a Super Bowl. Oh, also, a Vikings victory would justify the hype we gave Brett Favre this summer.

All right, let's enjoy some football today!

Winter Break In Review

As I write this, the forced march known as College is just days away from resuming. I don't exactly hate school, but it's hard to be enthusiastic when winter break seemingly flew by. For most students, MTSU's winter break was a decent length. They finished finals by the 17th of December and don't have so much as a syllabus to worry about until January 14th. However, between New Orleans and housing responsibilities (specifically spring training, but not the fun baseball kind), my break lasted about half as long (December 22nd through January 7th). New Orleans was crazy fun (more on that later, but that story would take too long for me to work out tonight), but it left me with an impossible situation. I had a little more than two weeks to get in the essentials of break. Those essentials are as follows:

1. Seeing High School Friends
2. Sleeping
3. Partying
4. Purging the Horrors of Last Semester from Your Mind

Now, I've never been a prolific party person, mostly because I come up with random alliteration that no one appreciates in a party setting (unlike a blog, where the brilliance is preserved in glorious HTML for all eternity). It also doesn't help that I'm not a big drinker, which is a requirement for college parties. It's not because of any moral issues I have with alcohol or because I can't control myself. I just can't stand the taste of booze. I believe it's because I have the taste buds of a twelve year old, because I also can't stand the taste of coffee (unless it is significantly more milkshake than coffee). However, this is probably for the best for mankind if you think about it. I'm already louder and more enthusiastic than about 99.5% of the world population, so does society really want to see what would happen if I turned to one of the most potent stimulants? The answer is yes, but only if they want to see me explode. As for alcohol, it is famous for its ability to lower people's inhibitions. For most people, this helps them unwind a bit. Unfortunately, I have precious few inhibitions to begin with (as Bean can attest to if you bring up the "Ear Lobe" incident from High School) so consuming alcohol could result in negative inhibitions. That means I would respond to something before it happened, breaking a fundamental rule of causality and lead to the entire universe collapsing on itself from the subsequent insanity.

In summary, by not drinking, I ensure that the entire universe does not implode.

That sounds much cooler than "Hates the taste" and is equally accurate (probably).

But I digress, the point of all that is while I am not much of a party person in the traditional collegiate sense, I did hang out with a lot of good friends all at once. On a related note, most of them were high school friends who I have kept close contact with during college. At high school graduation, one of the valedictorians said that we would likely not see anyone from high school again after graduation (or something to that effect). To her I say "Suck it!". I can be petty too!

Really, the only aspect in which this break was disappointing was the lack of sleeping until 2 PM and the lack of purging the horrors of how soul-crushingly bad History of American Sports was.

So that was my break in summary. Here are a few final quick thoughts from today's news that I care about:

• Sarah Palin joined Fox News as a contributor, creating the largest lightning rod of hate the Huffington Post has ever encountered.
• Pete Carroll leaves sunny USC that brought him fame and fortune for dreary Seattle in a league where he was an average coach at best. This means that the NCAA is about to crack something big on Carroll and USC flagrantly violating recruitment rules. As usual, the NCAA is a day late and a dollar short since everyone involved in the recruiting violation will have already received huge paydays and fled to the safety of the NFL (not that that will stop USC from being hammered down).
• Mark McGwire admits to using steroids in his record (and bicep) shattering season in 1998. In a related story, the sky admits to being blue.
  

New Year's Resolution

Okay, I have about 15 minutes left before 2009 ends, which means I cannot write my usual short essay on random stuff. So I shall be brief. My New Year's Resolution is to have more posts like the last where I just take an hour of time and write about whatever twice a week rather than work on massive updates that I never have time to complete. Let's see how long it takes for me to not live up to this resolution (I predict February AKA the month of EVIL).

Screw the rules! I have blogging!

Okay, I'm working the desk at Cummings Hall and the only alternative to blogging is studying, so I'm going to blog the ever-loving crud out of this desk. The problem is I don't have a prompt, so I'm going to try... WRITING SPONTANEOUSLY!

This really is ironic because spontaneous thought is one of my greatest strengths. You'd think that would translate well into blogging at random, but it hasn't. I suspect the Mayan Doomsday is to blame. But let's see what the next topic that comes to mind is...

Tutoring

Yeah, I know. Exciting stuff. But I have just about wrapped up tutoring for the semester and the general consensus is that I am eleven different kinds of awesome at my job. Mostly, I figure it's because I vaguely recall Algebra and don't back down. A prime example of this is coming up tonight, when I will be tutoring a girl in stats despite the fact I have not had stats since senior year of high school. Throw in that, being senior year, I didn't really learn anything that year and tonight should be very interesting. I figure I can bluff my way through with 95% certainty. That sounds vaguely mathy right? RIGHT?!

Health
In years past, I might have written something about health care here, but I'm far too busy to get involved in the bickering fest du jour. Unfortunately, this morning I woke up with a bit of a sore throat and sneezed more than usual. This would not be a big concern, except for the fact that my immune system has two settings- "prevent everything" and "let the germs win". So right now, I'm a bit worried that at any given moment, I will explode with plague. And most of my finals' strategy incorporates me being relatively unexploded and plague-free. So I'm going to handle this the way I handle every disease: by chugging a gallon of orange juice! That is surely the healthiest thing to do in this situation, as well as the most delicious. By the way, I've noticed most of my medical decisions occur at the intersection of "Delicious" and "Healthy". It is only a matter of time before I synthesize an H1N1 vaccine inside of a donut. Yeah, that's right, medical students who read my blog, I don't have to grow my vaccine strains in a culture, I just synthesize them inside of pastries. I would share my secrets with you, but then I remembered the last time I visited the doctor, I didn't get a lollipop for being "a brave boy". I'm not sure when lollipop care was dropped, but I'm keeping my donut vaccine a secret in retaliation! But I digress. The important thing to remember is that I need to drink more orange juice and I am withholding imaginary vaccines that defy medical science from the health care industry.

Well, my time at the desk is officially over. I hope you've enjoyed this trip down Spontaneity Avenue. Coming up next time, Finals, Harry Potter, Assassin's Creed 2 and more!

All We Want to Do is Eat Your Brains

Before I begin, I'd like to say that I write surprisingly more often than this blog would indicate. One of my most recent works was for the Zombie Defense Class I taught for my job with housing. That's right, I technically got paid to talk about how to Survive the Zombie Apocalypse. More astute readers may recall I mentioned this briefly in one of my earlier updates last semester. All in all, this presentation was 100% better than the one I gave last year. I had a powerpoint guiding me so I didn't stumble around as much (if I can ever figure how to post attachments, I will post it here). The preparation for the event was much better, so thank you to whoever made the Zombie banner to put in the lobby. Also, the event itself was much better publicized (because I made sure to put the flyers up more than 2 days in advance). Finally, I want to give a shout out to Melissa, for making brain-shaped sugar cookies. Truly, those were delicious brains.

More surprising was the fact that over 40 people showed up (compared to 8 or 9 last spring). But the biggest surprise of the night was what happened after the lecture. Last year, I decided to include a showing of Shaun of the Dead to try and attract some of the movie enthusiast crowd (little known fact: everyone will stop at an event which has free drinks and a movie). The ploy worked because 2 or 3 people showed up just for the movie. However, this year the opposite happened. Of the 40 people who showed up, only about 6 stayed for the movie. So, all in all, I'd have to say the Zombie Defense Class was a wild success. Thank you to everyone who came out. For those of you who didn't come, here is a sample of the presentation- the handout that was distributed to every table.

Zombie Defense Class

Survival Tips



1. Stick with a group and remained organized. Loners never last long in the zombie apocalypse. In fact, zombies come to expect survivors to travel in groups. After all, they say “Braaaaaaiiiiiinnnssssssss”, not “Braaaaaiiiiiiinnnn”. Stick with your RA and you stand a much better chance of survival.

2. A zombie avoided is worth a dozen zombies defeated. A single zombie is never much trouble, but you are in for a quite a challenge if you attract the attention of the zombie horde.

3. If you can hear them, they’ve already heard you. By the time you hear the telltale cry of “Braaaaaiiiiinnnnssss”, it means the zombie has already seen you, created an event titled “Eating Your Brains” on Zombie Facebook, and invited all his friends to it.

4. Zombies are lazy but persistent. Zombies are notoriously lazy. Zombies shuffle everywhere they go and even if they get someone’s brain, they never finish it. However, a zombie will viciously hunt you down at a leisurely pace for miles.

5. You have to rest, they don’t. The only thing harder than surviving the zombie apocalypse is surviving the zombie apocalypse is surviving the zombie apocalypse while tired. Though the zombies never stop their vicious leisurely shuffle, rest is absolutely essential. When you’re tired, you are more likely to make a careless mistake and become part of the All You Can Eat Brain Buffet. When you need to rest, find some place that offers a measure of security against the zombies.

6. No place is safe, only safer. During the zombie apocalypse, you need to find a defensible place and stay there. However, no place is safe forever and you always need to be planning your next move.

Concert Reaction

All right, I have a ton of subjects I want to talk about, but rather than cam them all into one unreadable update, I'm going to be making a series of smaller updates (which is the entire point of a blog that I can't seem to grasp). For those of you who are eager to know what's coming up, I'll be talking about the Styx/REO concert I went to, the Zombie Apocalypse lecture I gave (which over 40 people attended!), fantasy football (it's like gambling but legal), some of my other misadventures, and a few of the video games I've played (except for the very sassy, very fine honeys who no doubt frequent this blog. For you, I will be discussing the many sensitive poems I write displaying my emotional depth and sincerity and entire non-borderline obsession with guns, guitars and swords. Because that's not me).

First I want to discuss the concert because that is most recent and most likely to be forgotten when I inevitably put this off for two weeks. The opening band was an act called "Night Ranger", and they were the 1980s personified. They had the big blond hair and their first song involved was called "We're gonna rock! (Tonight! Woman!)" and involved them playing over-the-top guitar solo with periods of shouting "Tonight!" and "Woman!" interspersed. Then in the middle of that song, they start playing Highway Star for some reason. I'm not making it up. I'm listening to the fourth guitar solo of the song and I start thinking "This is pretty catchy... and familiar". I ask Bean, who went with me, if he noticed a similarity between this solo and the one in Highway Star. Night Ranger decides to remove all ambiguity from the question and sings the opening verse of Highway Star before going back to "Tonight! Woman!". It was a very disorienting experience. But all in all, I really like Night Ranger as an opening act. Not because of any musical proficiency, but because they reached a strange self-awareness of how great a parody they are of 80s rock. At one point during the show, they played the song "Keep Rockin' in America", in which the lead guitarist was flanked by American flags and they showed off a Stars & Stripes version of the band's logo. The only way they could be more 80s was if they had spelled the name "Nite Ranger".

Next up was the main event, REO Speedwagon, the masters of the power ballad. I am a recent convert to REO's music and I was pleased with their performance. They played most of my favorites (Riding the Storm Out, Roll with the Changes, Take It on the Run) and had a very good pace to their show. The music was skillfully performed and nothing too unusual happened. It's not that I was underwhelmed by REO, but Styx's performance was so strange that I feel REO's consistent and predictable (but still very awesome) show does not need further mention.

Styx was just a bit unusual at times during their concert. They played all of the famous Tommy Shaw (or totally cool) Styx songs- Blue Collar Man (my personal favorite), Renegade (which I got an awesome t-shirt for), Too Much Time on My Hands. They also played the Dennis DeYoung (or mind numbingly painful) classic- Come Sail Away. For the record, there is only one good version of Come Sail Away, and it is by Eric Cartman:




But the first odd thing was a cover song Styx did. This was no ordinary cover, it was a cover of "I am the Walrus" by the Beatles. It was skillfully done but still a very puzzling addition. Personally, I've always held a bit of a grudge against the Walrus, because I like things that make a lick of sense, or at least try to. But of course, Beatles fans will point out this critical flaw in my argument- "Goo goo ga joob". However, their keyboardist, who Wikipedia tells me is Lawrence Gowan, was just plain strange. Before punishing us with Come Sail Away, he decided to do a sing-along portion of the show. Yeah, you read that right, a sing-along portion. But not to any Styx or REO songs, no. He literally started off with the Rolling Stone's Ruby Tuesday. Then he chastised the audience for not singing better. I'm sorry I disappointed you, Mr. Gowan, but I didn't really prepare to sing Rolling Stones going into the evening. I was kinda hoping we'd do Renegade some time, is that cool? Finally, in the middle of Renegade, they had this really odd ten minute break to introduce themselves. I do not begrudge an artist his right to be known, but in the middle of the penultimate song is too late for introductions. We know who you are by this point, now get back to Renegade, dang it! And Lawrence Gowan had to weird me out by following the band members around and taking polaroids of them with one of those old instant developing cameras. It was very strange.

That said, it was Styx's birthday and they had the original bassist come out. They gave him a purple birthday cape. In a related story, I am now taking every reasonable measure to acquire a birthday cape. Finally, they ended with the reason for the tour, the song "Can't Stop Rockin" by both bands. And I mean both bands. When all was said and done, there were six singers, nine guitarists, and a drummer.

All in all, I'd say it was a great evening.