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.

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.

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!

Why do I hate Bloggy so?

I'm serious, I think I may secretly hate the English Muffin Power Hour. Why else would I treat it nice for a few months, neglect it for a few months, treat it nice, then neglect it again? That is the foundation for an abusive relationship right there.

But my New Year's resolution is to give Bloggy the respect he deserves! To be fair, he's already WAY more respected than The One Blog to Rule Them All (which died an unceremonious death and was forgotten by most). So let's get caught up on what I've been doing lately.

Latest TV Series: Rome
I got this series as a Christmas gift and so far its been a mixed hat. It's good enough to keep me watching but there are a bit too many characters with too confusing names for my taste (and this is coming from a four year Latin Student). Honestly, I had to look up to see who Sybylia was because they kept insisting on shoehorning her into the plot. Turns out she was Brutus's mom. I would've preferred she either be called Mrs. Brutus or have a lower third which identifies her as Mrs. Brutus. Of course, since I am a guy, there is a legit chance that I just filtered out the scene where they introduce her by name (tragically, that is a problem for me in real life too. Just ask Doug and Sam how they got their nicknames. In fact, it took me about 3 months to learn my best friend's first name. But I digress.)

Wow, I actually had to stop myself from digressing in the parentheses. And those are basic digression sanctuaries. I really DO need to update this place more often.

Anyways, back on point, it didn't take me nearly as long to figure out which soldiers were which. that could be a function of either:

A. My Y chromosome filtering out the non-awesome, non-sword fighting parts.
B. The fact that Lucius Vorenus and Titus Pullo command as much, if not more, screen time as Julius Caesar, Pompey Magnus, and Marc Antony combined.

My main criticism of the series is that its an HBO series. Which means none of the debauched acts Romans were infamous for are off limits. And they do their darndest to include all the debauched acts they can. There is no situation where I enjoy watching anyone get bathed in cow blood during one of their pagan rituals.

Latest Video Game: Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People and Far Cry 2

One of my biggest discoveries over the past few months (and indeed one of the biggest distractions from me updating this blog) has been Homestar Runner. I had heard and seen good things about it since 9th grade, but I never really bothered with the site until last fall. To say I loved it would be an understatement. Not only did I watch most of the cartoons and all 200 Strong Bad E-Mails in chronological order, but I also began assigning the Teen Girl Squad stereotypes to the many sassy ladies I know. If you haven't seen it yet (somehow), then I strongly advise it.

But I digress.

Does it count as a digression if I never was on topic to begin with?

Enough digressing! I jumped on the bandwagon at the right time, because over the fall they released the first full scale game, Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People, a "point and click em up adventure" game, in Strong Bad's words.

The game itself is okay. You click on things. Sometimes you click on things that need you to click on other things. Occasionally, you click things on other things and then introduce an entirely third thing to the clicking.

But the writing is brilliant. For starters, they let you write your own episode of "Teen Girl Squad" in the first two episodes. Second, the game always involves Strong Bad so the dialogue is always at the Strong Badian standard of excellence.

However, there is too much of a good thing. The game was broken into five monthly episodes which were released from August to September. By around the halfway point of the fourth episode I was starting to get tired of hearing Strong Bad and took a break from it (in terms of days and weeks not playing the game, even I'm not crazy enough to attempt to play through multiple games in one sitting).

As you might expect, there is no violence in Strong Bad. Sure, there is some Three Stooges style violence and the entire point of Teen Girl Squad is random acts of violence. But in order to keep things balanced I've been playing a bit of Far Cry 2.

Now, as I begin this, I realize I am rapidly approaching 800 words. In fact, I just jolted past the threshold around the adverb "rapidly". Usually, that means that the few of you who have survived long enough to get this far are contemplating the best way to tell me to shut up. So I will leave my exploits in Far Cry 2 for another day.

But I will say this. It is EXTREMELY violent. I can say without exaggeration that everyone in its vaguely described war wants you dead and they will stop at nothing to kill you. Actually, they only stop at towns, of which there are four in a 50 square kilometer area. Although calling them towns is a bit lenient. Two towns consist of a bar where your mercenary "friends" hang out next to a gun shop. The other two are a series of buildings where other heavily armed mercenaries mull around their faction headquarters, with maybe a church or a doctor's office in the town square, so the town's one civilian will have a nice place to stay. Of course, I also use the term "factions" leniently. First of all, each faction only has vague goals to advance their vague war but both are confident the only way to achieve vagueness is to mercilessly, yet subtlely, crush the guy who lives down the street from them. I've seen them fight each other all of twice. Whereas when faced by Hunter McMaincharacter, they all want me dead and will go out of their way to try and kill me. And the Jets and the Sharks had a more clearly defined uniform system than these factions.

The most telling stat is that in nineteen in-game days, my character has fired nearly 19,000 rounds (exact number: 18,553).

And yet I somehow have a lot of fun in this game.

Wow, I managed another 300 words after I said I would try to wrap it up.

Now, more than ever before, I digress.

I'll save the rest of my Far Cry 2 thoughts along with the first two weeks of school for later.

Finals Time

Well, finals are here, so that means its video time!

Today's theme is floating robots.

First of all we have Dr. Ball, M.D. from Robot Chicken. It is easily the best minute I have invested this week.



Next, we have a real life floating robot.



Wow. I do not want to face down the flying death cube.

Hurray!

Lots of news to go over. First, yesterday was the single busiest day of my college career. Originally, I had planned to make a list but it turned out rather boring. So instead, I'm going to talk about pizza.

In fact I'm going to use this as a platform to launch a new feature of mine. I'll call it The Hunter Wholehearted Recommendation. I'm a man of strong opinions and excellent taste. Truly, it has been criminally negligent to deny the world this information for so long.

There are two predominant kinds of pizza: the New York style and the Chicago style. There is an alleged California style, but from what I can tell, all they do is put expensive toppings on wheat crusts and charge you twice the price for it. That misses the fundamental glory of pizza. It's an affordable way to have delicious food and feed a family of four teenage ninja turtles.

But I digress. I consider myself an expert on Pizzaology as it has been my primary subsistence for nigh on eighteen years. So, as you might imagine, I've had a great deal of experience with pizza. But considering the results of the election, experience might not be the best angle for me to preach. But I shall preach it nonetheless. But I digress.

The Chicago pizza is best known as the deep dish. It also has some very unusual backwards pizza, wherein the cheese is on top of the crust and the tomato sauce is on top of the cheese. It is very delicious but easily the messiest pizza. Outside of Chicago, this pizza is almost entirely a deep dish, which is code for "Fill them up with bread". I am confident that chains come up with an amount of cheese and toppings they'll give you and just fill up the rest of the pan with crust, be it thin, hand tossed, or Chicago Deep Dish. So unless you like having a loaf of bread with your pizza, I'd stay away from the Chicago Pizzas in Murfreesboro.

I hate everything about New York. I hate the Mets. I hate the Yankees. I hate the Knicks. I hate the crowds. I hate the subways. I hate the taxis. But I love their pizza (also, Broadway is good and the museums are great). The slices are giant. The toppings are plentiful. The pie has a dominant presence on the table. The crust is light and delicious. All in all, if Jesus made a pizza, it'd be close to the New York Style.

Hunter Wholeheartedly Recommends: New York Style Pizza