I'm shocked. Almost too shocked for words...

But hey! What do you know? I've managed to find a few. First, allow me to establish a few facts ala Dickens in A Christmas Carol. I've loved the Civil War since I was 12. I've been reenacting it since age 13. I've loved dinosaurs from the moment I learned about them at age 4.



WHAT

THE

CRAP?

Some things should never meet.

I take a quote directly from the website of the Dinosaur Kingdom in Natural Bridge, Virginia:

It's 1863 and Union soldiers have discovered a hidden valley filled with dinosaurs. Now the Yankees plan to use the dinos as weapons of mass destruction against the South.

It begins with the impossible and moves onto the more impossible (somehow). Ignoring the fact that no one has ever found a T-Rex skeleton in Virginia, ignoring the fact that gigantic, cold-blooded lizards could not survive a winter in the Shenandoah, ignoring the the fact that no dinosaur fossils were discovered in America until 1856 so the typical reaction to finding a live one would be terror, ignoring the implausibility of dinosaurs not evolving over the course of 65 million years, ignoring that the commanding officer would have to be certifiably insane to deploy a meaningful number of troops away from the front in a war they were either losing (as of early 1863) or had just suffered horrific casualties from (post-Gettysburg), there are three outstanding problems.

1. A dinosaur is not a "weapon of mass destruction". There are two possibilities for whatever the commanding Union officer was thinking when he issued an order to capture the thunder lizards. One, he intended to domesticate the dinosaurs, adapt his saddles to a dinosaurs back, figure out how to mount a dinosaur, prepare the dinosaurs for the sound of cannons going off, properly devise tactics for dinosaur warfare, teach his subordinates how to properly execute these tactics (Company! Mount! Tyrannosaurus! Tyrannosaurus, at the double time, MARCH!) and organize regiments of Dinosaur Cavalry in a timely fashion. I'll be fair and say he's doing this right after Gettysburg, so he has all of ten months before Grant attacks Lee at Spotsylvania Courthouse. I'm no expert in Animal Husbandry, but I believe it takes a bit longer than ten months to make a previously undiscovered wild animal a Beast of War.

The other slightly more plausible explanation is he intended to capture a few of the dinosaurs and just unleash them on the Confederate ranks, like war dogs except without the loyalty. The problem with that is the logistics associated with transporting a hungry T-Rex to the front. Best case scenario, the T-Rex kills a few companies of Confederate Soldiers before getting gunned down by gunfire (I'm not sure what T-Rex's skin was made of, but I'm fairly sure it was softer than lead).

In either case, it's hardly a weapon of mass destruction.

2. Last I checked, there weren't any Union soldiers in the region of Natural Bridge in 1863. After Stonewall Jackson beat the Union Army of the Shenandoah in 1862, no serious effort to take the valley was launched until 1864 with General Franz Sigel, the only German general of the latter 19th century to not be an unstoppable killing machine. Whoever was commanding those soldiers was about 125 miles behind enemy lines when he gave his orders. Of course, I did say no serious effort was made to retake the Valley, and this was a rather silly effort.

3. How could there be a "hidden valley" within the Shenandoah Valley capable of supporting a Cretaceous Ecosystem with enough genetic diversity to ensure the survival of creatures for 65 million years?

Well, at least they only implied there were T-Rex's living here, not anything crazy like the Velociraptor.

Wait a second, what's that behind the T-Rex?



AWWWW HECK NO!

The Funny Ones Are Back

All right, inevitably, with every major event, people wonder how their favorite carpenter from 2,000 years ago would handle the situation. Naturally, the question was raised of how Jesus would vote. I know I'm about 3 weeks late with this post, but I feel its important to consider.

For those of you who may be rusty on your Biblical history, Jesus was tried and convicted of sedition, treason, and apparently tax evasion (the latter of which is completely false). Now, I'm pretty sure that those charges would be considered felonies by today's courts. At least, I hope they would. It's real bad if we're executing people for misdemeanors. But I digress.

My point is that, according to national law, Jesus wouldn't be allowed to vote because He is a felon. "But He came back from the dead," you may argue, which would've fulfilled His debt to society. Except the last time I checked, serving your sentence doesn't make you any less of a felon.

Also, I very much doubt He has applied for US Citizenship.

You win some, you lose some...

And sometimes they change the rules in the middle of the game. I won't name names, but certain organizations I may or may not have been fairly elected to the position of Vice President of Public Relations for the Raider Republicans have decided that the first election didn't count. You see, despite agreeing to the original date of the election, my opponent decided not to attend the meeting with the election. So when my organization of an indeterminate nature met again this week, my opponent decided to call a redo on the election. And since he was friends with most of the higher ups, they decided to let him give his prepared speech while I was supposed to make something up on the fly to compete. It did not help that he had brought in a healthy supply of his friends and attendance was down from the last meeting. But I fought well. Just not well enough.

Suffice it to say, I'm no longer a member of that organization. I prefer not to associate with people who have such a vague concept of the rules. It's the same reason I stopped hanging out with Oliver North, Bill Bellicheck, and the 1918 Chicago Black Sox.

P.S. I have a funny one in the works. Don't worry.

Holy crap! I have followers

All right, things don't show signs of letting up. As I type, phones are ringing everywhere and anarchy threatens to consume the Academic Support Center. So I will rely on the trusted numbered list to detail my many accomplishments this week. (I was typing this last Friday, as I type this, I am eating a Red Baron mini-pizza).

1. Gears of War 2 is a dozen kinds of awesome. In a week where I have not been able to focus my normal amount (read: borderline insane) of video game time, I have still managed to kill 2,000 Locust monsters in a week.

2. My interview for the position of SOA (a glorified tour guide at MTSU) went very well. I had clever answers and avoided horrifically stupid mistakes that I made in last year's interview (I won't list them, but one involved making an inside joke at the expense of Bean).

3. Speaking of Bean, he did manage to make it to Circuit City, unmauled by wolves. But when he got there, they announced that since they were going out of business, they didn't really feel the need to sell anything to anyone. So they reneged on their end of the deal. So the Bean and I did not patronize them. However, I still demanded my limited edition Gears, and to find one was a quest in and of itself.

4. I was elected to the position of Vice President for the Raider Republicans, proving that Republicans can still win, so long as they run against other Republicans.

5. I nailed my Macro test. SUCK IT FUTURE EARNINGS!

6. Titans are still undefeated! There's a legit chance that we will see an unbeaten team play a winless team on Thanksgiving. That's good entertainment!

7. There is no seventh item on the list.

8. What is the point of Instant Replay in Football if the refs are too corrupt/stupid to make the correct call? I'm looking at you Steelers/Chargers Officials!

Gears of Peace

Well, the day is finally at hand. Gears of War 2 is just hours away. I could have gotten it last night at midnight, but Circuit City had a really good deal. If you bought your copy of Gears 2 from them, they gave you a $20 gift card for the Xbox Marketplace, an online store where dorks such as myself can waste their money on video game related content such as extra songs for Rock Band (the $1.50 I spent on More Than A Feeling was a wise investment), extra content for games (Shivering Isles for Oblivion pushed the total amount of time of my life I spent on Oblivion to ridiculous proportions), and even entire games (Pac-Man has a game on approximately his 900th console). So that bonus alone made it worthwhile to wait til this afternoon to get Gears 2.

But there's a big risk associated with it. There are no Circuit Cities in Murfreesboro. Heck, I doubt there's a Circuit Municipality. So I would have to drive to Nashville, if I was a sucker. For you see, I have a friend in Nashville called "Eric" Bean Machine who attends school at Belmont, a college famed for its ability at hosting presidential debates. I've given him instructions to pick up Gears of War 2 for me from Circuit City when he goes to get his copy. that way we kill two birds with one stone.

But that doesn't seem like much of a risk, right? Having my half Bean, half Cyborg friend pick up the game seems like a very easy solution. Those of us who know the Bean Machine know it's never that simple. The Bean Machine is about 5 foot 6 and weighs in at a whopping 80 pounds. So there is the possibility of a strong breeze coming in and bloweing him away. But I digress, that is not the Bean's forte. His real mystery is the seemingly supernatural way in which things backfire for him. Based on numerous errands I've seen him run in real life, and slightly less numerous errands I've seen him run in Oblivion, here is my prediction of what will happen:

The Bean will be driving along, following his Google Maps directions to Circuit City. He will accidentally turn left too soon and get hopelessly lost. The Bean Machine will meander aimlessly for a few hours before running out of gas. However, being a marathon runner, he will get out and make a bee line for the Circuit City, sprinting as fast as he can. Unfortunately, he will run into a wolf and anger it. So then he'll be running from a wolf to Circuit City only to run right in the middle of a bandit camp, where no less than 3 motley brigands wait for the opportunity to stab and rob him. Then the Bean will run into a den of skeleton monsters. The skeletons, bandits, and wolves will make an impromptu alliance in which they decide not to kill each other until the Bean is dead. The Bean will, somehow, make it to the Circuit City only somewhat wounded and pick up the Gears of War. But as soon as he walks outside, he'll be chased once again by the skeletons, bandits, and wolves until he runs into a skeleton wolf bandit. At which point the Bean Machine will be utterly doomed and the wolves will probably end up with the Gears of War.

But I digress. My broader point is that if there is a way it can go wrong, the Bean Machine will likely find it, through no fault of his own.

P.S. When I said all that stuff about gift cards, I really meant it was a gift card for scented candles. And Gears of War 2 has a bunch of stuff about being in touch with your emotions and being a good listener. You know, just in case any of my many lady readers managed to make it this far with a positive opinion about me.

Baba O'Riley

Well, I made a promise to myself that no matter what happened in the election I would quote The Who today.

The change, it had to come
We knew it all along
We were liberated from the foe, that's all
And the world looks just the same
And history ain't changed

Yeah, check out that vintage sassback, courtesy of Pete Townshend.

But seriously, everywhere I voted for the Republicans, they won in a landslide. Mere coincidence? Or undeniable proof that my vote counts 1,000 times more than a regular vote?!

I think we all know it's the latter.

Anyways, I'm not too upset about the election. And that is almost entirely because Gears of War 2 is coming out in 48 glorious hours. Then, everything that doesn't have a chainsaw bayonet will be insignificant for a solid weekend. So that's how I'll survive the first week. Now, time to formulate a plan for the subsequent 207 weeks of Obamania.

The real victim of the election is the Daily Show. For the past three years, since the departure of the Stephens (Stevens?) Colbert and Carrell, Jon Stewart's only joke has been "Mock a Republican". Now, what will he do for funny? He can't rely on his alleged supporting cast, as they're a black hole of funny. Truly dire times for comedy central.

My candy preferences is just a little bit racist...

I just turned down a Crunch Bar because it was made of dark chocolate. However, I have a proud history of enjoying white chocolate and milk chocolate. So in order to keep from being racist, I took the dark chocolate Crunch Bar and I am hating every fun sized bite of it. As I type, I'm looking at its half mangled body wondering how I will purge the taste from my mouth and now I'm thinking of that delicious cookies n cream bar that Hershey made years ago and how effective that would be at getting rid of the taste.

Anyways, to conclude this post, I accuse my taste buds of being racist.

New Stuff

Well, there are lots of new things on the horizon. My work at The Exploding Barrel has not gone unnoticed and I was invited ot be a part of their podcast. Unfortunately, none of us live within 500 miles of each other so actually recording it has been difficult. But the important thing is, bit by bit, the world is realizing how awesome I am.

I made two news packages, those little stories you've seen on the evening news that cut away from the news room. My first one was serious and was filmed and edited in a day and a half. I wasn't too proud of it, but it did well. My second package was significantly more Hunterian, and took an entire TWO DAYS to film and edit.

Speaking of news, I also became the host of a game show called Faceoff. The first episode was rough, but by the second episode I was as zany as they come. I will be posting both the game show and the package here as they become available.

Also, I may have gotten addicted to Fable 2 and stayed up til 3 am playing it more than once this week. But that's unlikely, to any single females reading this blog. I was most definitely staying up late rehearsing incredibly sincere romantic phrases.

Think I'm kidding? I've engineered a phrase that never backfires. "Your ex-boyfriend has done you wrong." It may not be the most romantic saying, but every girl who has ever dated another guy will entirely agree with it, regardless of objective reality.

This week, I am producing an election coverage show for the MTSU tv network. Then I film not one, but two more episodes of my game show. Then I will get addicted to Gears of War 2 on Friday. I mean, um, come up with a new method of affectionately holding hands?